On the Record

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where your mouth is.

1. Linda Schreiber
   Member

   This morning a Press-Citizen reader posted a note about making school a year-round effort. The posting spawned a great deal of response. It does make sense to me that the "education" state would take a pro-active approach to education and educate youth all year. The premise behind this approach is that it offers several breaks between sessions and school buildings are air conditioned.

   Iowa does have more dual-income families than any other - meaning both parents work and are out of the home more than parents in other US states. The poster indicates that sports/activities hold back the change . . . is year-round school possible? Or should we just accept education the way it is and focus on other issues that need attention?

   Posted 2 years ago #

2. Joshua Schamberger
   Member

   For the record, I am not anywhere near as knowledgeable as I should be on this topic or the redistricting discussion. Especially with a son about to enter kindergarten this fall.

   Are all school buildings air conditioned? Even so, I would suspect the great majority are not at all energy efficient and year-round school would introduce them to huge utility bills/cooling challenges. As for sports/activities holding back the change...you can add the Travel Federation of Iowa (TFI) to that list as well.

   I attended a statewide CVB/DMO meeting in Des Moines earlier this month where schools were the topic of one discussion. Specifically, school start dates. Many of our larger statewide tourist attractions have expressed concern for many years about the impact of early school start dates on the Iowa economy. E.g., Iowa State Fair, Lake Okoboji, Adventureland, Amana Colonies. The concern is that early start dates impact attendance at these very large family-oriented attractors. Attractors that deposit millions of dollars into Iowa's economy each and every year.

   Anyway, Michigan addressed this issue a few years back and it is now state law that school cannot start before Labor Day. It appears most schools adjusted to this by adding 12-15 minutes onto each and every school day. Here is a story on it: http://www.savealabamasummers.org/states/michigan/bill_requires.html

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   Disclaimer: As much as I publicize our community as being the literary capital of the country, I am a terrible writer. Please excuse my typos, run-on sentences, and serious ellipsis addiction.

   Posted 2 years ago #

3. Gretchen Happ
   Member

   Many, if not most, I.C. schools are not air-conditioned. Nor are the buses. This is an important consideration. I've heard many teachers complain of students' inattention during those first few hot weeks of the school year.

   Posted 2 years ago #

4. Linda Schreiber
   Member

   Perhaps Josh is right. Starting school after Labor Day, as I did as a child avoids much of the heat-related days. I understand his position of advocacy for the travel / tourism industry. And, busing is another sticky and costly issue for school districts.

   But I would continue to advocate for air conditioning in school / community buildings. The majority of newly-built schools are incorporating this function. A later start date does not alleviate problems of a child retaining learning during a long summer vacation period nor the issue of child care for dual-income earners and single parents.

   Posted 2 years ago #

5. Laura Dallas
   Member

   I went to Elementary school year round and thought it was a really great idea. (I am in my 30's now so that was a good while ago!)

   We went to school for 9 weeks, then had three weeks of vacation, so students attended the same number of days as children who had long summer breaks.

   Our family moved to a district that had the typical summer off schedule, and I found it much more difficult to keep in the student mindset. When kids returned to school in the fall, there was a lot of time spent reviewing topics that had been covered the previous year, because who can remember what you were doing in math after three months?

   Over all, as a student, I found the year round approach to be much easier to learn, and also the frequent vacations were really wonderful, there was far less stress and boredom. As soon as school started to seem like drudgery, we had a nice break to refresh.

   I don't have kids, so I don't really care much how school years are organized, but having experienced it both ways, I think the year round schooling is superior.

   Posted 2 years ago #

6. Chris Liebig
   Member

   I don't believe that school is an unmitigated good for kids. Of course education is important, but there are some types of education and growth that happen more outside of an institutional culture than within one, and there are some drawbacks to being continually immersed in school culture. For one thing, during the school year there are far fewer opportunities for kids to make their own decisions about how to use their time -- which are, in many ways, decisions about who they are -- and to get away from whatever the prevailing peer attitudes and values are. I think kids benefit immensely from getting away from the school building and the school culture for a prolonged period every year -- especially during the summer, when the outdoor world is just waiting to be explored. I've seen my kids grow during the summer in ways that would never occur if they had to march to the beat of the school calendar year-round. (I don't think shorter breaks spaced throughout the year would have the same effect.) In other words, there's something to be said for just leaving kids alone for a while, rather than spending the whole year trying to manage and improve them.

   I suppose my attitude reflects my reluctance to give any one institution too much control over the environment in which my kids grow up. People try their best to create a good educational system, but we can never be 100% sure that the approaches we've settled on are the best ones, or that they won't have unintended consequences. Giving kids some extended time away from school is a way of hedging your bets. It's also a way to recognize that your kids themselves might have something of value to contribute to their own development, if they are just given some measure of autonomy over how to use their time, what interests to pursue, and how to understand the world around them.

   Posted 2 years ago #

7. Sam Osborne
   Member

   Kids need long summers away from school where they can learn all sorts of really valuable things: like learning to think outside of the sandbox and that you don’t need to be taught to learn personally important things that will last a lifetime or until one has an even better bright idea. And if you stub your toe, it is not failure, just a painful lesson that you learned don your own.

   Posted 2 years ago #

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