Y - Conneaut,OH

the basic idea is that kids come back to school in September and have forgotten a lot of what they learned the previous year. so in year round school.. there are not more days of school in year round school.. but the breaks are spread out without the 10 weeks off in the summer.

my kids have a traditional schedule. I get to volunteer in the school often and I know the week before a big break (Christmas or easter break) the kids are bonkers.. just crazed with excitement over the break.. I can imagine with more breaks in the year..just more opportunities for kids to get super excited and unable to learn.

I thinik the year round school has had success in poor areas.. cause the kids go home to homes without book, without enriching activities, without parents to take them to the library, museums and such.

my kids will do about 30 minutes of school work most every day in the summer. when they go back to school in the fall most likely they will have made progress and certainly not have fallen behind.

I taught in a year-round school (full disclosure - the school I taught in was not in-country), it is a great system, and I would LOVE to do it for our kids. I think the advantages are huge! You get the same number of days off, but just throughout the year instead of all at once. The school I taught in offered a month off in the summer, two weeks in spring, three weeks around Christmas, and then other additional "breaks" and long weekends throughout the year. The school did offer "during the day" activities (at an additional cost) optional for kids during most of the longer breaks (sports and art and music and such), for parents who worked full-time and would need additional childcare, so that wasn't an issue. Everyone in our school district was on the same schedule - there was no problem with siblings not having the same vacations.

Teachers didn't have to start from scratch at the beginning of the school year, and so teachers actually had time for some additional subjects because they didn't spend so much time "reteaching."

Since my husband does not work in academia, he doesn't get summers off anyway, so there is no advantage to us to having long summers off. Unfortunately, there aren't any schools in the area where we live now that offer year-round schooling. If there were, I would absolutely be looking into it.

I wish we had it here. Of all the people I've talked to who have it they say they LOVE it, they would never want to go back. Less teacher and student burnout (because of the regular breaks) and you get to travel during the (often cheaper) off peak season. Wouldn't it be nice to take a ten day trip in October or May if you wanted to? Or go to Disneyland on a random weekday instead school holidays with the masses?
And teachers like it because they don't have to deal with whole first 4 to 6 weeks after summer, a time wasted playing review and catch up for all the kids who have forgotten or fallen even more behind after the long summer break.
For parents who need child care, the child care centers and after school programs in those communities simply adapt their programs to accommodate the school schedule. It really seems like a win win to me.

We live in NC and have been in year round school for over 4 years now and I really dislike it.

We are from MN and all of our relatives in the midwest have traditional schedules. Around the holidays it's hard to plan things around everyone's schedule because the schedules clash.

While my nephews are off for summer vaca we are in school. They were just off for spring break and we don't have spring break. For Easter we had one day off from school.

If it snows during the week here and they miss school, the make up day is on the following saturday. One time I completely forgot and didn't send the girls to school on a saturday so they were marked with an unexcused absense. This is because there is no other day to make up for the snow day.

At the end of the year when they finish their grade they have one week off and then they start the next school year. And back to school shopping is pretty much non existant.

I used to love taking the girls shopping for back to school stuff and then send them to school in their new clothes with their school supplies and stuff. Now it's just another school day and the excitement just isn't there. I know that sounds silly and trivial but I grew up on a traditional schedule and that is what I've always been used to.

We also miss out on Girl Scout camps and Vacation Bible School. It clashes with the track schedule we are on so I just quit trying to make it work.

When my oldest gets into highschool then her schedule will become a traditional schedule. That means at one point both the girls will be on 2 completely diff schedules. That is so dumb to me!

Anyway I will get off my soapbox now. But yes, I really don't like year round school. Wether you have to get childcare for year round or tradtional school it's basically a wash. You can pay for 3 consecutive months of child care or have it spread out.

HTH!

MFM

My sons attend year round schooling that just started this year. It seems to be going good and they get alot more breaks just not as long. I have 1 child in elementary, 1 in middle school and 1 in high school. They all have the same exact schedules for when they have breaks and my son's have adapted to it pretty well.

I would love year round school here, mainly because of the weather. Summers are awful, and kids have limited options to stay entertained for 3 months during 110 degree heat. Our summers are like everyone else's winter, in which they can't really do much outdoors. So, it's miserable for kids.

From a working parent standpoint, it would also be easier on our bank account, not to have to pay for 3 months of full day daycare. It would make it easier to afford a summer vacation because we wouldn't be so worried about daycare costs.

One of the poor schools in our area has been doing it for years and it works out great for them. They have what's called an "intercession" which is a 2-week break between sessions. Because it's a poor school, they offer "fun" classes run by community volunteers during the intercessions. I volunteered there as part of one of my company's community programs and I taught jewelry making and hosted a reading group at the school library.

This keeps the kids off the streets and from staying at home all alone because their parents work and can't afford child care.

It also helped raise test scores.

The traditional school year was created back for an agricultural society where kids had to be home to do chores in the spring, fall and summer. I know we've gotten used to it, but I think the year-round works. We homeschool and we do year-round. It's nice being able to take vacations whenever during the non-busy seasons. We also don't lose anything during the breaks.

I can understand enjoying the summer though. It seems to be part of our society!

I would love it if the entire country would switch to year-round. It just makes sense. Not for childcare...my kids are old enough that I don't care about that, but for academics.

Kids spend a good amount of the year learning, the summer forgetting, and then have to spend time re-learning during the next year. It's a waste of time and resources.

I know there's a district near St. Louis that attends year-round. I don't know how successful it is.

It would completely not work for my family. Random longer breaks during the school year with no childcare? Not for us. We would put DS in private school if our district went to such a system. I think it shows an immense amount of disregard and disrespect for working families.when districts do this.

Well we are a homeschooling family and we do year round and love it so far :). I don't know if they do this in public school, but our school year will end mid July and start up again in September, so we have a nice little six week break to vacation etc :).

When we lived in North Texas several years ago the school district tried it. It didn't go over at all. The problem was there was a week long break about every six weeks or so. So all the parents that worked full time had to find child care of make arrangements every few weeks.

I used to work in year round school. In my case it was 3.5 weeks off at Xmas, 3.5 in spring, and about 7 in summer. You can definitely get used to it. I loooooved the extra time into January, long after the winter holidays to unwind and go to amusement parks and stuff after the crowds died down. Ditto in spring. The only downer was when everyone else got out in June, we had about 5 more weeks to go. In the heat. But days were long and weather was good you could hit the beach or play ball or whatever for hours after school was out that time of year (this was when I lived in San Diego). And once we were out, summer was in full swing, no June gloom or any of that. I actually quite liked it. Summer went by quick though, a week to travel here, a week there, before you knew it, it was time to go back.

I guess that's not exactly "year round" but that's what we called it. Shortened summer and added those extra weeks on to the other breaks.

I think you can get used to anything.