Students Make Tracks: Schools Mull Pros, Cons of Year-Round Schedules

By Inga Miller, The Modesto Bee, Calif.

Feb. 19–MANTECA — It’s a Friday afternoon in late January, and the students in Lisa Goodwin’s kindergarten class are stirring.

It might look like winter. But for this class, it’s the last day before vacation. They go to Walter Woodward Elementary School for three months and then take a month off.

Five-year-old Aidan Svay is looking forward to spending it at karate lessons. Sean Montalvo, a sixth-grader in a classroom down the hall, is looking forward to a relaxing stretch of video games.

When they leave, another set of students will return from vacation and occupy the halls, eat in the cafeteria and ride the buses.

Unconventional? Yes. But these are among the many ways life has changed for thousands of California students since the state’s experiment with year-round schools began a decade ago. Modesto City Schools’ campuses are among them.

In Manteca, like elsewhere in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, it started out of necessity. As school officials eyed signs of a construction boom in the mid-1990s, they scrambled to make space at existing schools because there wasn’t money to build more. Using empty desk space during summer by scheduling school in “tracks” proved a quick fix.

But now those districts have money to build. And that’s got officials thinking about going back to the traditional schedule with summers off. Meanwhile, parents and teachers who’ve become accustomed to the year-round scheme have mixed feelings.

“It seems to work really well with our schedule,” said Nicole Geldermann, whose kindergartner, Madison, is in year-round. “She is in such a active state of learning. And it gives her something to look forward to — both getting out of school and then going back.”

For teachers, too: Goodwin is heading on a monthlong trip to Mexico with her husband and their two toddlers.

“My husband and I love year-round education because we get to travel on the off months,” said Goodwin, who likes the freedom of traveling at a time when tourists are scarce — like February.

“Teaching takes a lot out of you mentally and emotionally, and just when you are getting exhausted, you get a month off. You get time with your family and time for some outside reading. I can think about what’s coming up and what I can do differently. It keeps you fresh.”

Sean’s mom, Dena Montalvo, agrees. Her first-grader, Matthew, also attends school year-round.

“After two weeks, they’re bored and ready go back,” Montalvo said. “So I personally like it. When they return, they haven’t lost a whole learning curve.”

Tricky for families to plan

On the flip side, it can be tricky finding children’s activities. February pretty much rules out camping — much less summer camp.

And students often are leaving in the middle of lessons. It can cut through the middle of a vital learning period.

“Sometimes, it’s a critical time for kindergartners where that light bulb is just starting to go off, and if they take a three-week break, we have to go back,” Goodwin said. “So, I ask the parents to do a little bit to keep their kids where they are.”

This vacation, that’s listening, putting a capital letter at the front of the sentence and a space between words.

But come summer, they won’t have a two-month break. That’s the hardest part for Karen Cadiz, whose kindergarten daughter and eighth-grade son are on year-round but whose high school sophomore son is on a traditional schedule.

“It’s frustrating,” Cadiz said. “I want to go to Pine Crest to go camping next summer but I have to make a reservation next month and we don’t know what the year-round schedule will be” for summer.

“It’s difficult when you have some schools on year-round,” said John Fultz, director of data services and testing for Manteca Unified School District, who handles the mechanics of year-round schedules.

The headache extends to district headquarters: custodians accustomed to using summer vacation to scrub up the grounds do it on nights and weekends. District meetings have to be held twice to reach teachers and staff off campus at any given time.

And if the district can build enough schools so students don’t have to share classrooms, the district would rather do that, Fultz said.

New school site a sticking point

The district can leverage the money to build with bonds passed by local voters in 2004 and at the state level starting in the mid-1990s, when the housing crunch hit.

But the sticking point is a site. It needs to be at the the district’s north end in the Stockton area to meet demand and lower pressure on overcrowding.

Negotiations to buy property have no definitive end date, said Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Michael Dodge.

So the Board of Education is waiting on that site before taking up alternatives, Fultz said.

Among the possibilities: returning to the traditional schedule or turning to a “modified” traditional year where all students attend together but on a year-round schedule.

“That would be the best of both worlds,” Goodwin said. “You don’t have all of the comings and goings but you have the benefit of the shorter breaks spread through the year and not one big long one. So you’re fresh when you come back.”

Planners for Modesto City Schools are monitoring a drop in students and looking to see if there might be enough desks to go back to the regular schedule, said Cindy Alba, director of year-round education.

Two years ago, Salida Union School District switched its four elementary schools that had been on year-round to a “modified” year, with four weeks off for winter break, two weeks off for spring break and a shorter, eight or nine weeks for summer. It also instituted the schedule at its middle school.

“Some teachers and parents like it and some don’t,” said Assistant Superintendent Mark Walker.

The Oakdale Joint Unified Schoold istrict and Ceres Unified returned to the old fashioned year with 2 and a half -month summer vacations.

That sounds good to Kim Colbers, whose three grandchildren go to Woodward Elementary.

“I’m old-school,” she said. “I prefer traditional, because I like summer vacation.”

Bee staff writer Inga Miller can be reached at imiller@modbee.com or 599-8760.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Modesto Bee, Calif.

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