The Learning Never Stops: Three Districts Experiment With Year-Round School

By Sandra R. Brodnicki

Written for News & Views

Wisconsin lags behind other states in embracing a year-round school calendar. Yet that hasn’t stopped a few schools throughout the state willing to try out the concept, which now delivers education to more than 2 million children nationwide. At least five Wisconsin schools use an alternative calendar for learning.

Congress Elementary School in Milwaukee pioneered year-round schooling in Milwaukee Public Schools. Two more Milwaukee schools joined Congress in year-round scheduling this year, and other year-round schedules can be found in Racine and Beloit.

Year-round education reorganizes the school year to provide more continuous learning by dividing the long summer vacation into shorter, more frequent breaks. It does not eliminate summer vacation but merely reduces it, according to the National Association for Year-Round Education (NAYRE), a non-profit organization that advocates improved K-12 education through the implementation of alternative schedules.

Lois Byrd, year-round education coordinator at Janes Elementary School in Racine, says the parents and students involved in the program like it very much. The historic school building is located in the heart of the city. -- Photo by Bill Hurley

Students in a year-round program typically attend the same classes and receive the same amount of instruction as students on a nine-month calendar, although in a few YRE schools – such as Congress Elementary – the school year has been lengthened. The year-round calendar is organized into instructional blocks and vacation periods that are distributed across 12 months.

However, year-round schooling does not seem to be taking off in Wisconsin, according to Keith Pollock, Department of Public Instruction analyst. “It really hasn’t been on anyone’s radar,” he said.

That didn’t hinder officials and teachers from Hackett Elementary School in Beloit, who began looking four years ago for ways to promote better retention and to shorten the review period when students return to school. One of 12 elementary schools in its district, Hackett is now in its second year of a three-year year-round education pilot program called the Continuous Learning Calendar. The purpose is to provide more frequent breaks and a shorter summer vacation to promote better attendance, retention of skills and improved school climate.

The reasons for introducing a year-round program vary. In some instances, such as at Congress, the objective is to increase classroom time, said Barry Gilbert, assistant executive director of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association. A year-round program has allowed the district to introduce 16 additional days in the school year, he said.

On the other hand, the introduction of year-round programs at the Starms Centers and Urban Waldorf Schools in Milwaukee this year was based on an attempt to distribute the periods of instruction more evenly over the school year to improve student retention.

Originally designed to relieve overcrowding at Gilmore Middle School, the year-round education program in the Racine School District was implemented six years ago at both the middle school and at Janes Elementary, a P-5 school, said Lois Byrd, year-round education coordinator at Janes. The year-round program at the middle school lost favor with teachers, students and parents after three years and simply faded away.

However, the year-round scheduling is still strong at Janes today.

“The teachers and students we’ve had have been pleased with the calendar,” said Byrd. Students seem to retain much more, she added.

“It’s amazing. You can just pick right up and go.”

Teachers apparently support year-round calendars at the Milwaukee schools as well, Gilbert added. “I’m not getting any complaints. They seem to like it.”

Typically, safeguards are added to the contracts of teachers working in experimental educational settings, such as year-round school, Gilbert said. For example, agreements between the union and Milwaukee School Board allow staff members annual review of such programs.

“If it goes south, there’s a lot of ways to review it and bring it back to a more traditional school,” Gilbert said.

Teachers in Hackett Elementary School in Beloit are offered similar protection, said Nancy Graczyk, president of the Beloit Education Association. Hackett is now in its second year of a three-year Continuous Learning Calendar pilot program. All teachers who work at Hackett have the opportunity to opt out with no penalty, she said.

Racine’s Janes Elementary School draws a very diverse student body. It is 30% black, 42% Hispanic and 27% white. Above, 1st-grade teacher Sue Slater sings to her class. Year-round coordinator Lois Byrd, a member of the Racine Education Association, said all the staff in the building have volunteered for the program. They work the same number of hours and days as other REA members, she said. Parents are very supportive. “They put a lot of trust in us,” Byrd said.

“The feedback I’ve received has been, by and large, positive,” Graczyk said. “Teachers really enjoy the calendar breaks.”

Year-round schooling does have its problems, Byrd and Graczyk admit. It can be a logistical nightmare when the rest of the district is on a different calendar in terms of building maintenance, teacher or specialist scheduling.

“It was very difficult at Gilmore (Middle School),” Byrd said. “After the third year, the staff and principal decided it was too costly to continue.”

The community is an important part to the overall success of a year-round program. Teachers were directly involved in bringing a year-round calendar to the Beloit school.

Teachers, parents, school board members and administrators all embarked on a three-year period of investigation and implementation before launching the new program. Part of that included visiting Janes and Congress Elementary Schools.

“We had a variety of committees working on a variety of issues and included teachers,” said Principal Bob Layman, who coordinates the Continuous Learning Calendar at Hackett. “Once the school board gave us the go-ahead, we started putting the meat on the bones.”

Teachers can flex their creative muscles when it comes to trying out different types of programming for the intersessions, the designated days students and teachers are not in a formal educational setting. “It’s pretty much left up to the creativity of the teachers to come up with what they’d like to teach,” Byrd said.

Graczyk added that the intersessions, which are optional, give teachers an opportunity to be creative in their lesson planning. “Teachers love that kind of stuff,” added Graczyk. Recent offerings at the Beloit school include Read Around the World, Netscape Navigators and Apple Pumpkin Potpourri.

Parents are also excited about doing something new, said Karen Battist, former PTA board member and parent of a Hackett 5th grader.

“As a parent, I feel it’s been good for our child,” Battist said.

Parental support of the alternative calendar rose from 74% approval rating prior to the first year to more than 90% after the first year, according to a survey cited by Layman.

As a member of the Beloit Committee on District Initiatives, Graczyk has had the opportunity to work with the Continuous Learning Calendar since its inception. The purpose of the CDI is not necessarily to monitor its progress, but to keep a record of the entire process, she said.

As in other successful year-round schools, Hackett teachers had the opportunity to be a part of the process from the start, which has been very positive, Graczyk said.

“We like that attitude much better than ‘Here, we’re doing this, and too bad if you don’t like it.’”

There is no single year-round calendar

There are almost as many different ways to implement year-round education calendars as there are schools using them. The Beloit and Racine schools implementing year-round learning have adopted the following calendars:

45-15 Single-Track Plan – This is currently the most popular of the year-round calendars adopted by schools, including Hackett Elementary School in Beloit. The year is divided into four nine-week terms, separated by four three-week vacations or intersessions. Students and teachers attend school for nine weeks (45 days), then take a three-week vacation (15 days). This sequence of sessions and vacations repeats four times each year, providing the usual 36 weeks or 180 days of school. Four additional weeks each year are allocated to winter holidays, spring vacation and national, state or local holidays. (Milwaukee’s Starms Centers and Urban Waldorf Schools have modified 45-15 plans.)

60-20 Single-Track Plan – Students attend school for 60 days and have vacation for 20 days at Janes Elementary School in Racine. Students rotate throughout the year until they have had three 60-day terms and three 20-day vacations. The 60-20 plan can be varied to take into account holidays and state attendance regulations. It can be conducted in either a single- or multiple-track format.

Posted January 18, 2000