Year-Round Programs Given High Marks for Educational Continuity

While summer break begins this week for most Orange County schoolchildren, more than 17,000 students will not get a summer vacation this year. Or next.

Instead, they will leave school for a month here, or three weeks there, throughout the year. That’s how the system works at five Orange County school districts that now have year-round schools. And at all five, the idea of staggered vacations has received positive marks from administrators, teachers, students and parents.

Proponents say the year-round system speeds education because children do not forget over summer vacation what they learned the previous term.

Different Schedules

And, they say, it helps teachers avoid burning out before they get a reprieve. Finally, the rotation saves tax money and avoids the cost of new schools because buildings don’t sit idle all summer.

The year-round school systems vary. At some schools, the entire student body attends for 45 days and takes 15 off, year-round. At some, students attend for 60 days and vacation for 20. Five school districts in Orange County have at least one year-round school. At the year-round schools in Irvine, Fountain Valley, Orange and Capistrano Unified, all students vacation at the same time.

The Santa Ana Unified School District divides its year-round students into four groups and rotates them, which increases school capacity. The district has had year-round schools since 1980.

Gene Bedley, principal of El Camino Real Elementary School in Irvine, said “year-round” is really a misnomer. “What they do is go to school the same number of days as other kids but with vacations in every season.”

Exhaustion, Boredom

Those vacations, school administrators say, help prevent exhaustion and boredom among both teachers and students.

“At this time of year in a traditional program, students and teachers alike are kind of tired. It’s a real goal for them to get to summer vacation,” said Ralph Jameson, principal of El Rancho Junior High in the Orange Unified district, which has had year-round schools for six years. “But our students and teachers are pretty refreshed this time of year because they’ve just come back from a vacation.”

A study conducted when the school first switched to the system showed fewer student referrals to the office, which, Jameson said, “lends itself towards the idea that the attitude and behavior is better.”

But Pegge Lacey, the Sacramento lobbyist for the National Council on Year-Round Education, said the “primary argument we make is that youngsters going to school on a more continuing basis backslide less.”

On the year-round schedule, said Harriet Bakenhus, Orange Unified superintendent, “kids come back from vacation and literally open up books to the pages where they left off. On a traditional schedule, they spend at least a week reorienting.”

Continuity is most important, administrators say, for students who speak languages other than English. Barbara Nelson, assistant superintendent in Santa Ana, where 12,000 elementary school students have limited English proficiency, said many “go to homes where they don’t hear the English language being spoken.” The shorter breaks, Nelson contends, help children remember what they have learned.

And, Nelson said, “a lot of people like it because of the vacations. If I was a teacher and had a 60/20 schedule, I would enjoy having October and May to go anywhere in the world and February to ski.”

At Plavan School in Fountain Valley, the year-round system has been used since 1972 because it works for another group of students: the 73 who receive physical and occupational therapy.

The most detailed study of year-round schooling was commissioned by the Oxnard Elementary School District, which began the system in 1976.

Between the 1981-1982 school year and the last school year, Oxnard students’ average math score on the California Achievement Program increased by 23 points, “for a very simple reason,” Supt. Norm Brekke said. “Math, of all the subjects we teach in school, is more subject to memory and recall and loss of learning over time if there isn’t momentum in the teaching schedule.”

But Brekke estimates that 90% of the districts that try the year-round system do so to increase their schools’ capacity.

‘Immense Savings’

John Mockler, a senior partner in the education consulting firm of Murdoch, Mockler & Associates in Sacramento, says the increased interest in year-round programs results from “immense savings in capital.” By increasing the capacity of existing schools, a district can postpone costly construction of new schools.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has placed 93 schools on year-round schedules, needs $1.5 billion to build enough schools to meet its growth, Mockler said. New schools cost about $14,000 per student, he said, so every time construction can be avoided through year-round scheduling, “you can put that (money) in the bank,” he said.

In Oxnard, Brekke has calculated other savings. Student absences are lower under the year-round system, allowing the district to collect more money from the state based on average daily attendance. Over the last 10 years, Brekke said, vandalism, burglary and graffiti also have decreased dramatically.

“When schools were closed for summer vacation, with no staff in the buildings, we were losing typewriters and computers. We had broken windows and other types of mischief,” he said.

Some Problems Posed

Up to the year before Oxnard initiated year-round schools, that mischief was costing the district an average of $85,000 per summer. Last school year, the cost was slightly less than $10,000.

Nationwide, according to the National Council on Year-Round Education, 400 schools operate year-round. More than half of those are in California.

Although virtually all administrators agree that the benefits of year-round schools outweigh the disadvantages, the system can pose some problems. Year-round classes can be difficult to implement at high schools because of specialized course offerings, and they can pose difficulties in planning family vacations when one child is in a year-round program and another is on the traditional schedule.

But Charles Ballinger, executive secretary of the National Council on Year-Round Education, said the concept will take over.

“Year-round,” he said, “has to come to American education in one form or another over the next few years.”