Are there options where you live?
What is your preference?
What would be your ideal calendar (meeting the current # of days/hours requirements)?
In my county about 1/3 of the elementary and middle schools are on the "year-round" calendar. It was used at first because the county (population) was growing faster than they could build schools, and having a school as a year-round school allowed it to enroll more students. The year-round schools work as such: there are 4 tracks, so a student is on 1 of the 4 tracks the entire year. Roughly every 3 weeks, a track "tracks-out" and the group that was tracked-out "tracks back in". So you are in school for 9 weeks, get 3 weeks off, and then do it over again. Everyone gets the week from Christmas to New-Year's off, and everyone gets the first week of July off. So if you had an equal distribution of students in each track (which we don't), then you could have 33% more students in a school.
Families either love or hate year round schools. Some really enjoy the long summer vacation, especially those with a beach-house or lake-house. Others really enjoy being able to take a vacation in the spring or fall when it's less crowded and less expensive. Also it is believed that kids retain more when they don't have a 3 month break from school. However we have no year-round high schools, I think because there are many more specialty subjects in high school, for example a school may not be able to have multiple physics, calculas, and other advanced subject teachers.
But there is 1 (out of about 20) high school in the county that is on a "modified calendar". I like this one a lot (but unfortunately the school is not close, nor does it seem to have good test scores (doubt it's due to the calendar). The modified calendar is almost the "traditional school calendar", except they give a 2 week fall break, give an extra week at Christmas, and an extra week at spring break, so the summer break is 4 weeks shorter (so 2 months instead of 3). This seems to me like the best of both, and a great compromise. I mean, in most places we no longer use our kids to "work the farm" in the summer, wasn't that the original purpose for them getting summers off.
The one problem with year-round schools is that once they get to high school, they switch to a traditional calendar, and so families don't want/like having one kid on a traditional calendar and another kid on a year-round calendar. Although if you were to get your kid into a school with a Modified calendar, then there could be some overlap.
What is your preference?
What would be your ideal calendar (meeting the current # of days/hours requirements)?
In my county about 1/3 of the elementary and middle schools are on the "year-round" calendar. It was used at first because the county (population) was growing faster than they could build schools, and having a school as a year-round school allowed it to enroll more students. The year-round schools work as such: there are 4 tracks, so a student is on 1 of the 4 tracks the entire year. Roughly every 3 weeks, a track "tracks-out" and the group that was tracked-out "tracks back in". So you are in school for 9 weeks, get 3 weeks off, and then do it over again. Everyone gets the week from Christmas to New-Year's off, and everyone gets the first week of July off. So if you had an equal distribution of students in each track (which we don't), then you could have 33% more students in a school.
Families either love or hate year round schools. Some really enjoy the long summer vacation, especially those with a beach-house or lake-house. Others really enjoy being able to take a vacation in the spring or fall when it's less crowded and less expensive. Also it is believed that kids retain more when they don't have a 3 month break from school. However we have no year-round high schools, I think because there are many more specialty subjects in high school, for example a school may not be able to have multiple physics, calculas, and other advanced subject teachers.
But there is 1 (out of about 20) high school in the county that is on a "modified calendar". I like this one a lot (but unfortunately the school is not close, nor does it seem to have good test scores (doubt it's due to the calendar). The modified calendar is almost the "traditional school calendar", except they give a 2 week fall break, give an extra week at Christmas, and an extra week at spring break, so the summer break is 4 weeks shorter (so 2 months instead of 3). This seems to me like the best of both, and a great compromise. I mean, in most places we no longer use our kids to "work the farm" in the summer, wasn't that the original purpose for them getting summers off.
The one problem with year-round schools is that once they get to high school, they switch to a traditional calendar, and so families don't want/like having one kid on a traditional calendar and another kid on a year-round calendar. Although if you were to get your kid into a school with a Modified calendar, then there could be some overlap.
