Year Round Schooling

My kids are in year round and I really like it. We get breaks when others are in school making traveling and vacations easier to plan.

However, I dread when I have one on traditional schedule schedule in middle school and one year rounder for two years.

Our school district tried it out in parts of Austin.. The parents over all said they liked it, but had a very difficult time finding child care at the different times of year that they were off.

It was a bit difficult for working parents and parents of children with other age groups of children . Example if you had a child in elementary school going to year round but also had a child in Middle school or high school, their schedules were different,. And since summer camps and many summer programs rely on college kids, they were not available to work the odd calendar to fit these students.

And then the people that were willing to work these few weeks, needed more permanent positions.. Does this make sense? It was like our society is not set up to accommodate this schedule.

We are so used to school in the fall with a winter break to celebrate Christmas and then off for the summer, especially down here with the incredible heat. if they attended in the summers down here, the electricity would be very , very expensive. So to have off every 9 weeks, did not fit into most peoples work schedules not to mention High school level schools, feeding into traditional colleges.

Nobody around here does it. I've heard other states tried it and it was not found helpful and they stopped it. It also gets very hot here in the summer and the electric bill would eat up any savings, that's for sure.

I hate the idea of year round school. I do not know of anywhere in Canada that does it. Where I live we have very long, cold winters and we really look forward to spending our summer vacations at the lakes and beaches. Since I was a SAHM and now I work for the school division I never had to worry about finding child care, but if I did work in the summer I would feel so much better knowing my kid was having fun at camp in the summer and not sitting in school. Many of my fondest childhood memories are of lazy summer days. I never experienced a loss of knowledge over the summer and either have my kids. I must say that we manage to stay busy and have fun all summer.

It's not done in our school system (one of the largest in the U.S.) but my husband is English, and in Britain, it is the norm. My niece goes to school all year but has one long break of four weeks from late July to late August, and about three weeks at Christmas, and one- or two-week breaks at other times between "terms." So there is no long slog where she has no break in sight at all, and she does get one extended break in summer months.

The school offers great programs at the school during the break weeks (though not at Christmas or in the long summer break). This helps working parents keep the kids occupied while the parents are working on those breaks. Kids just continue to go to school during those breaks and get things like a week-long computer "camp" or a combination of gymnastics and swimming time, etc. Our niece loves the break-week classes. But kids also can take those weeks entirely off and vacation or whatever with their families.

My in-laws feel that the year-round schedule keeps the learning fresh and current. They also see how many Americans scramble to find a lot of expensive camps and sitters etc. for kids as coverage because mom and dad must work while the kids are out of school for many weeks on end.

My niece and her parents always seem to be going fun places, taking a lot of trips, etc., much more so than most American families I know, so the breaks seem to work very well for getting them vacations and relaxation. Sounds like a good idea to me....

Homeschooling has no influence over their particular system because year-round school has been used over there for a very long time.

My city has 24 elementary schools. Four of them are year round (two of those four are actually K-8 schools) and the other 20 have a traditional September - June calendar. We have six other junior highs (grades 7-8) and four high schools (5th one under construction) and all of these upper schools are traditional calendar.

The people at the year round schools like having the fall break (three weeks off in late Sep/early Oct), but don't love the extra long spring break (three weeks instead of one). Some like the short summer so the kids stay fresher and others miss having the typical summer.

We have schools around here that do it and I wish ours did. I would do it in a heart beat.

My kids are in year-round school.

A lot of Utah schools do year-round because there are so many children (Utahns tend to have larger families). Since there are so many kids, there is not enough room in the schools to do a traditional year. With year-round, one or 2 classes for each grade are always out of school. There are only a few weeks a year (I believe 3 in the summer and maybe 1 for Winter Recess) that everyone is gone.

A new school is being built and the kids in our area will switch to traditional schedule since there will now be more room. I know many of the parents hate year-round, so many are relieved. Personally, I liked the schedule. The summer vacation gets a bit long and we all want to bite each other's heads off at the end (when it is a traditional school year) and with year-round, the summer vacation is quite short. I think this year it is 7 weeks for us. There have been years when we have switched schedules so got out of school super late in the year and returned very early and only had a 3 week summer vacation! That was too short for us, but 7 weeks is just fine. A lot of the families do take vacations through the year during their 3 week breaks.

The child care situation is probably the most difficult part of year-round. I was fortunate to be able to work from home the last 5 years; it was hard to have the kids home while I worked and I was relieved to have my peace and quiet once they returned to school, but at least I did not have to scramble for a 3-week babysitter every 7 weeks. I have started working outside the home now but I am not sure I would have chosen to do so for a few more years if we were staying on a year-round schedule.

This may not count for me as I homeschool but I plan on doing some work with my kids over the summer but it won't be sit down paper work. Just some games and flash cards. I don't want to chance all of their hard earned work (and my work for 9 months!)

From what I can see no my area doesn't

I wish we had year round schooling. It is so much easier for everything
Especially the kids. They all do so much better in terms of learning and everything. Being able to vacation or get away in any season sounds like heaven. My sister had and we all loved it.

Last summer we moved 4 miles and into a district that is year round. I LOVE IT! Mostly because we were paying over $100 per week for our very active 11 yo to go to Boys and Girls Club. So we went from paying for 9 weeks in the summer to 6 weeks. They also get just over 2 weeks off for fall, winter and spring breaks.

It's getting more prevalent near me. My district is offering a pilot year round program next year for elementary and we're going to try it. The schedule is basically three weeks off at the end of each marking period with a slightly longer break in the summer. I think it will be very good for my son who does well at school but hates to read at home (his favorite season is winter so that's an added bonus). My daughter is worried about the shorter summer vacation but she only has one more year before she starts middle school anyway. Family and friends in nearby districts love their year round programs so I'm looking forward to see how it works for us. They'll start mid-July during which they only go four days a week with some extra time off at the end of August so I've still been able to schedule some fun summer activities for them. Plus the district received grants to improve their AC systems. I'm not sure how the home school movement has influenced this; I think most homeschoolers around here do it primarily for religious reasons so I don't think local schools offering year round would change their minds, but I could be wrong.

Our current traditional year is after Labor Day to mid June..

To my knowledge, we don't have any year round schools in my area, but my niece goes to a year round school.

Just thinking back to my days as a single mother who needed child care, I don't think year round would be easier. For me, it's easier to have after school care for the entire, continuous school year and then pick a summer program for the entire, continuous summer break. To have to go back and forth from after school care, especially after school programs at the school for little or no cost, to needing full time care every 6 - 8 weeks would be a continuous hassle.