by Gene Poschman

Created on: June 30, 2009

The time children spend in the classroom should be spread across the entire calendar year, not just nine months. We do not need to expand the number of days kids spend in the classroom; we just need to be more practical about how we manage it.

Originally the nine-month schedule was put into place because we were once largely an agrarian society and children were needed to be home during the harvest time of the year to bring in crops. This was during the Nineteenth Century. We are in the beginning of the Twenty-first Century; isn't time to move forward?

From a parental point of view it would make life a lot easier. While growing up our kids experienced both school terms. While they were attending school in their early primary grades they went to a school that was run on a traditional nine-month school calendar. In their later primary years they went to a year round school. When they attended junior high and high schools, they returned to the nine-month schedule.

During the time they were in a year round school, they were in class roughly nine weeks and then they were off for four weeks. While in this schedule their grades were better, they were happier about going to school, and the four shorter vacation periods were more practical. The kids always knew that after each quarter they had four weeks off.

Teachers who had been in both systems preferred this system also. There was no long summer vacation period when kids would suffer learning loss. The teachers didn't need to spend part of the new term rehashing curriculum from the year before. Under a year round schedule if a child was falling behind, the time between quarters gave the teacher, the parents, and the kid time to work on the problem and help the student catch up or stay current.

Summer vandalism at the school was non-existent because the school was never really shut down. Major maintenance on the school was easier to perform on a more active schedule. During the summer, classes were more creative. Sometimes there were outdoor sessions for the children because of the warmer weather and the dress code was adjusted for the comfort of the children. At times the kids said, "...It was not even like going to school at all." This made for a more positive learning environment.

It took some adjustment at home, at first, because of the new vacation schedule. But we soon learned the advantages of taking vacations during the off seasons. The cost of vacations was cheaper, businesses were happy to

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