Dive Brief:
- The North Carolina Senate’s latest version of the state budget would allow year-round schools only if they are multitrack, where students attend in four rotating groups.
- The News & Observer reports the change as written would take effect during the 2016-17 school year, affecting 88 single-track year-round schools, where all students attend on the same schedule and typically get three weeks of break between 9-week quarters.
- The change has been backed by the state’s tourism industry, which has lobbied against shorter summer breaks, but a backlash from parents has pushed Senate Rules Committee Chairman Tom Apodaca to say no change would take effect before 2017-18 and year-round schools will not be required to be multi-track.
Dive Insight:
Year-round schools have been embraced as a way to combat the “summer slide” — the loss of critical information during the long summer break from study. In communities where students do not have access to enrichment opportunities over the summer, many return to school not only having stagnated in the time without classes, but actually with lost learning from the prior year.
To some, the summer break is seen as an anachronistic relic of a time when children of farmers needed the summer months to plant and work in the fields. Switching to a year-round schedule is often an expensive endeavor for schools, however, which need to lengthen the work schedules of their staff and cool their buildings during the hottest months of the year. Some cities that have piloted year-round programs have had to get rid of them during funding cuts.