Balanced Calendar

One of the blogs I follow is Exponential Impact, written by Trent Bowers, the Assistant Superintendent of Worthington City Schools. He recently wrote an article discussing the change Noblesville (Indiana) Schools has made to its school calendar. The big news is that they have reduced their summer break to about eight weeks, essentially June and July, but have created breaks in October, December and March lasting two weeks.

I am intrigued by this.

The claim is that the educational benefit of doing this is that the kids "backslide" less over the summer. Mr. Bowers cites studies which have shown that students lose two months of math skill over the summer, and lower-income students also lose two months of reading proficiency.

From a family scheduling perspective, I don't sense that restarting the first of August is that big of a deal. If you are around any of our high schools in early August, you know that the fall athletes and marching band members have already started their practices. I suspect that many of the kids in the lower grades are out with their parents getting supplies, and getting eager to get out of the house and be with their friends. So are their parents.

Those two week breaks during the year sound pretty good as well. While the winter break is already two weeks, a two-week October break is something new, and I think adding a second week to Spring break sounds pretty appealing.

A key question is of course, what our teachers and staff would think of such a schedule. Many of our teachers start gearing up in early August for the new year, even though their contract doesn't require them to report back for the new school until a couple of days before the students. How would this change that? Perhaps this kind of schedule could mean less restart effort to the teachers as well.

The facilities folks count on the summer months for performing maintenance projects that they can't do easily while school is in session. You may have noticed that with all the rain this summer, our facilities team is hustling to get all the parking lot and driveway reconstructions completed, and there are double crews working at Alton Darby Elementary to get the roof replacement done. How would they deal with having fewer weeks to complete these tasks?

Then there is the question of what it means to fall sports.  I'd think it wouldn't have much effect on game schedules unless and until other school districts make similar changes to their academic calendars. But if league rules or state law prohibits practices from beginning until a certain number of weeks before the game schedule starts, then athletes and band members wouldn't have the opportunity for the "two-a-day" kind of preseason practice schedule many now employ - because the students would be in class most of the day. Does this give an advantage to school districts who start classes later in August?

In spite of these challenges, we can't ignore the potential benefits to the students. After all, the mission of a school district is academics, not extracurricular programming and facilities maintenance.

What do you think?