A Wonk in Wonderland: School Board Should Consider Year-Round Schedule.

Opinion

The Arlington Public Schools Board is going to have to put real thought into two options for easing capacity: build new schools or switch to a year-round schedule.  We just do not have a enough space to continue on as we are, says a 98-page report by MGT of America Inc., a consultant the school board hired.  Although the report does not suggest any option as a favored one, under all of their plans, the projected capacity of schools just looks bad.

Given how stinking expensive schools are to build, I think the county really needs to give a close look at year-round schooling.  In terms of capacity issues, it might just be the silver bullet. 

Which brings me to my first major aside: Why did MGT not show a chart of capacities if Arlington pursued year-round schooling?  In their report, they basically went through a number of different models for eleviating crowding—the 6/7ths model, the programming model, etc., and then they showed the effect of each model on capacity per school (click here to see the report). 

Although they wrote about year-round schooling and said in terms of capacity it was quite effective (though they knew of its draw-backs in terms of disrupted family life) they did not provide capacity numbers under that model.  If I could be at tonight’s school board meeting, which I cannot, the question I would ask is what are the per-school capacity numbers under a year-round plan?

Although the consultants did not give me the chart I needed to see if year-round really is the panacea I think it might be, on page 57 the chart and analysis of the hypothetical year-round system are good.  I need to see the projections per school, however, because I need to see why Barcroft Elementary School, the system’s only year-round school, is projected to be at and over capacity in just a few years.

Obviously, this would be huge undertaking, and I am not sure that I would vote for it once more analysis was completed. 

But this is what I like about it: if the hypothetical plan is an accurate analogy, our capacity goes from 100 percent and above (that is over capacity) in most schools, to well under capacity, the 80 percent of capacity range.  Think about what every school could do with that kind of extra space.  (Barrett Elementary School’s projection hits 119 percent capacity in 10 years.)

We would not have to raise class sizes to do this. 

Children would not learn until June, forget until September, and start to learn again after Labor Day.  With shorter vacations, they would stay more focused on their education.

The drawbacks as I see them (and some are hightlighted in the report) are significant, but not insurmountable.

This would be a huge adjustment to family life.  One big worry in the report is that one student in a family would be on a schedule in middle school different from his or her siblings in elementary or high school.  That is, one has a vacation from Thanksgiving to Christmas, the other has Christmas to New Year’s day.  The way I would handle this is that every household in a planning unit (those are pieces of neighborhoods that the school administration uses for planning) would be on the same schedule regardless of school. 

Teachers might have some large concerns regarding classroom use if students on different schedules are in the classroom on the same day.  I am thinking here of chemistry labs that have to have experiments set-up for students just starting a unit, and others who are ending it on the same day.

Summer school, summer jobs, summer camps and sports leagues would be disrupted.  No doubt.  But we are no longer an aggrarian county, so the need for working crops all summer is gone.  I am not exactly sure how this would be handled, but nationally, other schools do this, so let’s look at how they handle this issue.

I’m not saying that I would definitely vote for this should the choice be offered, but I think it’s time for a good, hard look.