National Trend: Stick With Traditional Calendar

Why is Wake County ignoring the warning signs all over the U.S.? Mandating year-round attendance will not work! In fact, it can bring a school system down in just a few years. Check out the facts for yourself: Here is a list of systems all across the country that have tried and rejected or considered and rejected mandating year-round schools.

According to the National Association for Year-Round Education (NAYRE), the advocacy group for year-round schools, in 2000-2001, there were 600 public year-round school districts (2,983 schools). By 2004-2005, the number of public year-round districts had dropped to 487 (3,009 schools) (that last link requires Acrobat Reader, which is available for free here if you do not already have it)

Breaking News

Well, today is the big day that the reassignment proposals for WCPSS were released. In case you haven’t heard, you can access specifics of the plan by going to their website at http://www.wcpss.net/

My family was not directly affected, but when I see that over 3,000 traditional school students have been reassigned to year-rounds, it strengthens my resolve to fight what will end up being an albatross around the neck of our community. As you know, over the past two years, I have done extensive research on all aspects of year-round education – pros and cons. To me, the most disturbing findings are those which cite cases all over our country where school systems mandated year-round conversion, only to return to traditional schedules within a few years. The reasons why might vary slightly, but the most recurring themes had to do with greater-than-expected costs, no significant educational advantages, the destruction of close family and neighborhood ties, and teacher burn-out.

It would be futile to even try and share all of my findings in this venue. What I will do, however, is refer you to articles, webpages, etc. that I have found to be especially interesting and informative. As with almost any subject, you can find whatever you want to find “out there”, but I will be selective in what I choose to include. Also, there might be a few comments that do not apply directly to our situation.

First of all, from a piece posted by Wes Walker, “To go year-round for overcrowding reasons is letting the facilities dictate the program, and not the program dictate the facilities."
His entire site is at: http://www.geocities.com/weswalker99/

Thursday AM Interview on WPTF

Early Thursday morning, December 8, I will be interviewed by Kevin Miller on WPTF radio. They are supposed to have me on following the 8:00 AM news, to answer Kevin's questions on mandatory year-round attendance, and I guess possibly on the school calendar law as well. I was told that I'll only be on for 8 minutes, so there's no way I'll be able to say everything I'd like to say! If there is an opportunity for listeners to call in, I would really appreciate some support. Thanks, and please pray that I'll get the main points across!