The Switch to All-Year Classes Has Few Critics : Schools: A year-round schedule is favored for educational reasons by the Fillmore district and two more Ventura schools.

To a chorus of praise and hardly a murmur of protest, two grade schools in Ventura and the entire Fillmore Unified School District are preparing to convert to year-round schedules this summer.

The picture is sharply different from that in Los Angeles. There, all-year education has caused angry debate and marathon school board sessions.

In the Ventura County cities, parents have added voices of approval to those of community activists and teachers. They say all-year schools are in tune with working parents’ schedules and mean better family vacations in the tourist off-seasons.

Ventura will convert two of its 17 elementary schools on July 30, bringing the total to three.

A year-round program has been available at the Mound School in east Ventura for two years. Adding two smaller schools in west Ventura, E. P. Foster and Sheridan Way, will double the number of students in year-round programs to about 1,400. Parents who don’t approve can transfer their children to other schools, and the district will provide bus rides.

A 4-year-old year-round schedule at Fillmore’s Piru Elementary School is so popular that the whole 3,289-pupil district will switch Aug. 1.

Surveys of parents in both cities showed strong support for the idea, officials said.

In the two Ventura schools more than 70% of parents surveyed approved a year-round schedule. The school board voted in February to bring it to the schools’ 800 pupils.

“The issue was to provide a choice for parents, to give them the opportunity for something different,” board member May Lee Berry said.

James Pike, president of the PTA at Sheridan Way, said: “We’re not like Los Angeles. We don’t need it for overcrowding. We’re doing it for educational purposes, to help the kids out.”

Both districts will keep all children in school at the same time but abandon the three-month summer break.

Classes will meet for nine or 10 weeks at a stretch, with two weeks off in the fall, three weeks at Christmas, a three-week spring break and about six weeks for summer vacation.

In some year-round schedules, children in the same school take breaks at different times. That’s necessary when the aim is to get more pupils into the same number of schools, as in Los Angeles. It has been a major source of parents’ outcry in Los Angeles.

In Ventura County, the Oxnard Elementary School District has been viewed as a model for year-round programs since it became the nation’s first fully year-round school district in 1987. Other districts have studied the idea but decided against it.

Ventura and Fillmore officials say short, frequent vacations help students remember more of what they learn.

“We really believe there’s an academic advantage,” said Michael Sellwood, Ventura’s director of administration. “The theory is they don’t lose as much as over a 12-week summer vacation. The amount of review that needs to take place is cut significantly.”

Chuck Weis, assistant superintendent in Fillmore, said officials “hope to see students able to focus more on school by not having long breaks in the summertime. We’re doing it for pedagogical reasons.”

Sharon Snure, a first-grade teacher at Ventura’s E. P. Foster with 30 years’ experience, said many children consider a one-week vacation too short but return to school refreshed after a two-week Christmas break.

“I’m hoping a two- to three-week break at the end of each academic quarter will just enhance their eagerness to get back to the books,” Snure said.

A committee of parents, teachers and community members recommended that the Ventura district also convert its four middle schools to the year-round program. The district plans to move slowly, first holding meetings with parents. A year of meetings preceded the changes coming this year.

Despite the support, the new schedule has its critics. Some parents say the idea that short breaks improve learning is unproved.

“My family does not need a change, and if they had never brought this up it would have been just fine with us,” said April Martens of Ventura, who has twin daughters in the fourth grade at Sheridan Way and another daughter in second grade at Foster. “They never presented evidence that kids in year-round would do better. They never showed any test scores to back it up.”

Teresa Young of Ventura said she is pulling her two children out of Foster because when they reach middle school they will be on a traditional calendar. That would give them a different vacation schedule than her youngest child when he starts elementary school.

Sellwood said siblings of different ages being on different calendars is “probably the biggest negative we face.”

However, officials said indications are that the parents of no more than 60 children will exercise their option to switch schools. Of 51 parents who registered their children for kindergarten at Foster earlier in March, only three wanted the traditional school calendar, Principal Gregory Kampf said.

“The results so far are overwhelming that parents want their kids to remain,” Sellwood said. “Of course, we recognize that part of it is parents want their kids to stay in neighborhood schools.”

Most parents, officials said, agree with parents like Pike of Sheridan Way’s PTA.

“Summertime is the worst time,” he said. “There’s nothing to do, everybody’s hot and irritable. Hey, put them in school.”

Sheridan Way Principal Robert Frazier agreed: “For children from homes where both parents are working, the opportunity for going away is not always available, so summer ends up kind of being a blank time for our children.”

Some parents say vacationing on the year-round schedule is better because crowds are smaller and the weather cooler.

“If you’re vacation-conscious, it’s really beautiful to take a vacation in the fall,” said Ventura board member Terrence Kilbride, whose children are in all-year schools.

During the shorter breaks, called intersessions, administrators are hoping to offer remedial classes and enrichment courses in the arts, music and physical education.

Sacrifice for the sake of year-round schools, however, is nothing new to parent Doreen Kennedy.

For three years she has driven an hour a day to take her son to Mound School, even though they live just across the street from Sheridan Way. Kennedy said her son likes the frequent breaks at Mound and she believes he is learning more.

According to Kennedy, year-round schools “are just a better way to go” for parents and kids.

“It’s just worth it,” Kennedy said. “I don’t care if they tested the kids and found that academically they’re not higher. I just see my son is not as fatigued. . . . He’s happy, and that’s got to count for something.”