Wednesday, January 30, 2002
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Wednesday, January 30, 2002 |
| Longer school
year ahead?
By DAVE HAMRICK
That proposed school calendar you may have seen along with your child's report card or on a table at a PTO meeting is not a done deal, Fayette County Board of Education members want you to know. "The board has not studied it ... it's not on the table," board member Janet Smola stressed during Monday's regular meeting of the board. Parents' input is being sought, and in some cases negative input is being received on the calendar, said assistant Superintendent Stuart Bennett. "The teachers have been very positive. Nine of ten have been in favor" of the calendar, Bennett told The Citizen. "But we're getting some negative [comments] from the community." Bennett said the school board's Communications Committee, made up of a wide cross section of personnel from bus drivers to administrators, has been discussing the calendar for 2003-04. "We do it two years in advance," he said. Once the Communications Committee decides on a calendar to recommend, the final decision will be up to the Board of Education. Any such proposals are placed on the table for a full month before the board acts on them. "No calendar is set until this board votes on it," said Bennett. Under consideration, he said, is the so-called "balanced" calendar, which shortens the summer break and inserts more time off during the school year. "It's the same 180 days," said Bennett, "just divided a little differently." For one parent's strong objections to the proposal, see the Letters section in today's Citizen, Page 4A. Calling the proposal "a radical change in the educational routine which has served families well for decades," Jean M. Zhuño of Fayetteville says the changes would inconvenience parents, who would have to arrange for baby-sitting services several times during the year rather than all at once for the summer. She also suggested that the school system would solve that problem by offering those services itself. "In my opinion, the extended care option that may be provided by the schools during these off weeks of vacation will provide yet another door for the public school system to take over the raising of children, a task which is rightly the parents', not the government's," she wrote. She said the proposed calendar also would provide less time for teachers to update their educations. That's something the committee is studying, Bennett said. "We're checking with the universities" to make sure the course offerings match up with the school calendar, he said, adding that most state colleges and universities are starting a new round of classes in August, as the proposed calendar would have Fayette schools do. Two proposals are under consideration. Under one, students would report to school Aug. 11, 2003, taking three days off for Thanksgiving, with winter break running Dec. 22 to Jan. 6, an additional winter break Feb. 16 (Presidents Day) to Feb. 20, spring break April 2 - 9, and the last day of school May 28. Under the second scenario, school would start a week earlier, Aug. 4, with an additional fall break Sept. 22 - 28, a full week for Thanksgiving, the same winter and spring breaks and the same ending date. Bennett admitted that educators have for years been pushing for an end to the old "agrarian" calendar, which gave three months off in the summer so that the children of farmers could work in the fields. Educators say a shorter summer break would enable children to retain more of the information they've learned. So-called "year-round" school, with even shorter summer breaks and more frequent breaks during the year, has proved unpopular with parents, and the "balanced" calendar has been developed as a compromise to that approach, Bennett said. "It does indeed have less down time," he told the school board, "and time when we can do remediation throughout the year." In her letter, Zhuño says she values the joys of childhood more than the need for learning. "So few years to play, to dream, to have fun," she wrote, "to lie around looking up at the clouds and climbing trees and the Fayette County school board wants to decrease these idyllic days of summer, foreshortening the already precious few moments children have to 'just be kids.'"
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