LETTER: Should Year-Round Schooling be an option for managing LW District growth?

Richard Morris and Sadie

 Before we moved to Redmond, my family lived in a number of states due to military duty. Colorado Springs used a year-round school schedule to reduce overcrowding in its schools. In a nutshell, our school facilities sit idle for approximately 12 weeks during the summer break. Year-round scheduling utilizes that 12 week break by implementing multi-track schedules. 

Year-Round School is the scheduling of educational institutions so that students take class throughout the entire calendar year. A motivation is that higher student throughput is accomplished via more effective scheduling of school resources. Year round schedules deliver the same number of total days of classroom education and vacation as traditional calendars, distributed differently throughout the year. Funding considerations favor multi-tracking students, which allows more students to use the same number of classrooms, instead of constructing entirely new schools. Some institutions use this method to relieve overcrowding in some of the larger schools.

Advocates claim that year-round calendars help students achieve higher and allow teachers to provide more effective education. Reports from the California State Department Of Education show that standardized reading test scores increased 19.3% for year-round grade school students[1] and that a greater number of year-round students met state score objectives than those on traditional schedules[1]. Conversely, opponents insist that year-round education is detrimental to student learning. Some school board officials and studies indicate negative impacts of schedule changes and year-round education. Lawsuits have even been filed against various school districts to block or ban year-round calendars,[2] charging that year-round education is "harmful to students."
 
By Richard Morris
Education Hill - Redmond
i Phone Photo by Yoder

LWSD Overcrowding input session schedule:
Tuesday, September 28, Eastlake High School, 6-8 p.m.
Thursday, September 30, Juanita High School, 6-8 p.m.
Wednesday, October 6, L.E. Scarr Resource Center, Redmond Town Center, 5:00-7:30 p.m.