CYPRESS : Year-Round Option Studied by Schools

Although overcrowding is not a problem in the Cypress School District, administrators will study a possible year-round schedule.

At a meeting this week, officials of the elementary district’s nine schools discussed the option. While no consensus was reached, Personnel Director Jim Owen said the administrators agreed to look into the option.

“We are just in the real initial stages of exploration,” Owen said.

While other county districts mainly use year-round schools as a way to fight overcrowding and increase student populations, Cypress is interested in the option as a way to improve students’ overall education by eliminating “long periods and breaks,” Owen said.

In a survey conducted at the end of the last school year, 33% of parents responding said they would be interested in finding out more about the year-round option. Three schools--Dickerson, Arnold and Luther--are soliciting community reactions.

Dickerson Principal Lawrence Spaulding has held a community meeting and has another scheduled for November. He hopes to conduct a survey by early next year to find out how people stand on the issue.

If the response “is positive, we will go forward,” he said. “If it is not, we will drop it.”

One of parents’ biggest initial concerns--especially if they also have children in schools outside the Cypress district--is that vacation times would differ, Spaulding said. Scheduling could also be a problem, because Cypress feeds into another district for junior high school.

If the community is behind the idea, Spaulding said, his school could go to year-round schedule in the 1993-94 school year.

Owen said all of the pros and cons will be studied. District trustees have not held formal discussions on the matter, “but they have approved attendance for some principals at a year-round conference so they could learn more about it,” he said.