District 214’s apparent philosophy: if it ain’t broke, let’s think about breaking it. . .

Last updated on: September 16, 2015 at 9:02 am by Jane the Actuary

District 214’s apparent philosophy: if it ain’t broke, let’s think about breaking it. . . 2015-09-16T09:02:43-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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From a letter e-mailed to parents yesterday:

Our Board of Education will be meeting tonight with our elementary school districts to discuss a variety of topics, including potential changes to the school calendar. In the coming months, we will be engaging parents, students, staff and community members in a conversation to determine what the school calendar could look like for the 2017-2018 school year and beyond. We will be launching an online survey to solicit your feedback on different calendars as well as holding several community listening sessions on this topic.

Many districts have moved to a “collegiate-style calendar” where school starts in early August so that finals are completed before winter break, and others have considered a year-round calendar. We have received feedback from our school community on this topic and felt it was necessary to engage in a conversation with you to discuss the opportunities and challenges in designing a calendar that best serves the needs of our students. Any potential changes to our school calendar would not be implemented until 2017-2018.

Tonight is the beginning of the process, and we look forward to engaging in this conversation with you during the course of this school year.

To which I can only respond with a Trumpian, “how stupid is that!”

As context, there is no such thing as “schools of choice” in our area. You either attend your local public school (or an “alternative school” for at-risk kids or new immigrants), you shell out $15,000 or so for a Catholic or other private high school, or you homeschool. And that’s the case even though the school district offers specialty programs at some schools and not others, which can only be accessed if a parent can pull their kid out of the classroom and drive them to another school for that hour, then drive them back (missing, of course, instructional time during the drive). So this is not a discussion of offering families a different calendar as an alternative that they might choose – it’s all or nothing (or, worse, “too bad for you” if your kid’s high school is chosen for a pilot).

Yes, there are advantages to an early August start, but they are minimal: if all local school districts follow the calendar (and that’s a big if; around here, elementary (K-8) and high school districts are separate, with separate boundaries, so that there are multiple elementary school districts which feed into the high school district, and some elementary schools may feed into multiple high school districts), then it may be easier to schedule summer activities (day camps, swim lessons, etc.) at the park districts, without cutting everything off weeks before school resumes to accommodate college kids returning to campus. (Though even so, the park district cuts things off way before university classes start, so I don’t know that it’s even necessary.) It would also be a help to families taking certain kinds of vacations — e.g., being able to go to Disney in the off-season.

But the expressed reason, having finals before winter break rather than several weeks afterwards, is not an issue. Unlike at the college level, most high school classes are year-long, and the half-way point of the end of the semester is arbitrary. If your concern is that it’s stressful for kids to have a final exam a few short weeks after returning from vacation, then by all means, reschedule the semester’s end exam for the day before winter break, and continue instruction seamlessly afterwards, or allow each teacher and class to schedule a major cumulative exam at some natural ending point to a unit of study rather than artificially at the midpoint of the school calendar. But these subjects are not meant to be studied for a semester and then forgotten, so if you’re afraid that all the learning that happened in the time prior to winter break, will vanish with two weeks off, then you’ve got a much bigger problem.

And there are significant disadvantages to an early-August start. Yes, I know that this is common in the South. But you know what else is common in the South? Temperatures which are already quite summer-y in May, and unbearably hot in August. In the South, it’s quite sensible to say, “if you’re going to spend August in the air-conditioned indoors, you might as well be at school,” and to say, “the weather’s still nice in May, so let’s let school out early.”

But we’re talking the Chicago area. We’re not the Artic, to be sure, but warm, swimming-pool weather doesn’t really get underway until mid-June, and and comfortable summer temperatures stick around until mid-September, or even later. Sometimes, yes, May can be equally warm, but just as often it’s still cool, and the official opening of the outdoor pools Memorial Day weekend has often been sparsely attended, if not purely symbolic with closures anyway due to the chill. If you want to give kids, and families, the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors — swimming, beach, boating, camping, etc., May and August are not interchangeable. What’s more, for every family that enjoys out-of-season rates at resorts or theme parks in May, there are other families who find that their favorite local vacation spots or activities haven’t even opened up.

And a year-round calendar? To what benefit? If you can’t afford to fly South, what’s the advantage of extra vacation time in February? And I find it highly unlikely that families will be able to find activities for their kids during the patchwork of vacations in the same way as camps can be scheduled for summer. And for high schools? Kids would lose the opportunity for a summer job, or other extended activities. Besides which, don’t teachers always claim that their long summer break is used for continuing professional education?

Bottom line: minimal positives, major negatives, all so that the School Board can tout themselves as being innovative and cutting-edge? Please, no!

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