Year-round schooling may end in Fairfax County

Toting lunchboxes and backpacks, students at seven Fairfax County elementary schools returned to school this week, a full month before their peers.

But it may be the last year they do so.Some of the schools’ parents and educators worry that students at a traditional calendar school would not receive the unique opportunities and educational benefits provided by a year-round calendar.

The likelihood that all seven modified calendar schools will be forced to revert to a traditional calendar is high.

This year, the Fairfax County school board had to trim its budget this year by $150 million and faces a budget deficit of at least that amount next year. Only an infusion of $50 million in federal stimulus dollars saved the modified calendar program from the chopping block this year.

Fairfax’s modified calendar program marks its 13th anniversary this year. The first program launched at Timber Lane Elementary in Falls Church in 1996, and six other schools followed suit over the years. Staff and parents had to vote to accept the change at each school, and the Virginia Department of Education had to grant a special waiver to any school wishing to start instruction prior to Labor Day.

What makes the modified calendar schools unique are their “intersession classes,” courses conducted in a two-week break at the end of each nine-week quarter. While students are not required to attend, turnout is typically very high.

At Timber Lane, for example, attendance is between 90 and 95 percent of the 500 students enrolled in the school, according to Timber Lane principal Jim Quinn. An intersession class for first-graders might mean learning to make smoothies in a restaurant setting.

While the kids are focused on all the fruit they are blending up, they are also learning math skills, economics and an extra heaping of social interaction. Classes can be taught by teachers, retirees, or community members with a passion for a subject area, and subjects range from photography to textile arts.

Intersession gives teachers the opportunity to target problems as they crop up, rather than waiting until the end of the school year to refer a student to summer school remediation, said Quinn. Students can sign up for classes they are interested in, or are invited to join a class, often to help boost their skills in a particular area.

Timber Lane parent Sara Forsyth said her son was invited to an intersession class last year that focused on subtraction skills, eliciting envy from her younger daughter, who is also a student at the school. “She said, ‘I want to be invited to a class!’” Forsyth said. Kids often get excited about the unusual class offerings, and the choices they are given, she said.

Forsyth has encountered a great deal of resistance to what is perceived as a weird school calendar that interferes with the mainstream schedule of summertime activities. Other parents do not understand that frequently the school’s calendar creates more opportunities for family time and travel because breaks are spread throughout the year, she said.

Children spend more time learning, she said, even though the two-week intersession classes feel like fun to the students.The federal No Child Left Behind program mandates that schools must make “adequate yearly progress” in core subjects like reading and mathematics, and parents and educators argue that the modified calendar schools innovative intersession classes boost student performance.

Fairfax County has not conducted any long-term studies on the effectiveness of the intersession classes on student achievement. However, the former principal of Timber Lane and founder of the modified school calendar initiative in 1996, Diane Connolly, compiled data in 2007 in an attempt to demonstrate some of the calendar’s benefits.Connolly found that 89 percent of English as a Second Language (ESOL) students retained their language proficiency skills over the shortened summer break.

Of the student body as a whole, 98 percent maintained their reading skill level. Discipline referrals dropped by half. Teachers used fewer sick days, thereby reducing the school’s expenditures for substitute teachers. Connolly also determined that students who attend every intersession from kindergarten through the sixth grade receive the equivalent of a full extra year of learning by the time they reach middle school.

A 2007 study conducted on 300 low-income Baltimore city students by Johns Hopkins University researchers also found that students who lack summertime and extended learning resources are far less likely to enter college-prep high school programs, and tend to score lower on achievement exams. High school drop-out rates increased and college attendance rates decreased among these students.

Six of Fairfax’s modified calendar schools are of the Title I program, which provides supplemental funds to assist schools with the highest student concentrations of poverty to meet school educational goals. Many students also come from homes where English is not the primary language.

Forsyth said if Timber Lane went to a traditional calendar, she has resources to provide her children with activities in the summertime. But many other parents do not.“I can afford to put my kids in camps, but a lot of the community at Timber Lane is not going to be able to afford that,” Forsyth said. “Those kids just won’t get the type of learning they have during intersession.”

With the increased focus on American student achievement slipping compared to other industrialized nations, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has endorsed an increase from the standard 180-day school year, to mixed public response.

Fairfax County schools superintendent Jack D. Dale said his personal inclination is that year-round schools are the right direction to go — but for money.

“The problem when you go back to basic core instruction is that you will negatively affect these kids who don’t have the same rich experiences other kids do,” Dale said. “You do the opposite of No Child Left Behind. You start leaving children behind.”

While test scores and other rudimentary methods of calculating the modified calendar schools’ benefits to its students show neutral to positive results, Dale said he thinks they have been successful in closing educational achievement gaps. “The only way to get all children up to standards is to give additional resources to those who are further behind.

It works,” Dale said. “We are successful in closing a lot of those gaps. We plow a lot of money into schools which have greater needs than others.”

Taking the seven elementary schools off the modified calendar schedule would save the school system an estimated $2.5 million, costs that result mainly from the additional cafeteria, library and transportation necessary to run the schools during intersession periods.

But when the county spends more than that on remedial summer school programs each year, Dale said the net result may be a loss.

Modified calendar schools cost marginally more, but putting the $7 million to $8 million the county spends on summer school each year into maintaining the modified calendar schools may serve the students and community better.

“We become so test focused, so focused on reading and math,” Dale said. “You hear stories about school districts cutting back on P.E. and the arts. So far we haven’t had to do that, but I understand the pressure to do it to increase reading skills, so they cut back on recess, or the lunch period. But I think you need those things to become a well-rounded individual.”

Copyright 2009 Fairfax County Times. All rights reserved.