09/11/98

Year-Round Schooling

Q: Why don't schools run swing shifts like corporations do? My child has a definite "second shift" biorhythm. She is never fully awake until noon but has a high IQ and reads incessantly. I think she'd thrive at school on an 11 a.m. -- 7 p.m. shift. Parents could just as easily carpool to early morning extracurricular activities as to late afternoon ones. And parents could choose the school hours that best fit their work schedule.

A: Although I doubt that administrators will adjust the school day to accommodate student sleep cycles, many districts around the country are experimenting with schedules that may be better suited to the needs of working families.

Year-round schooling is one such experiment. Proponents say that it reduces the need for reteaching skills and content forgotten over the summer, so students learn more. Parents appreciate not having to scramble for child care or having to pay for costly summer camps. Year-round schooling has been most successful when adopted district-wide. When tried in only some of a district's schools, it just complicates the schedules of families who have children in schools with differing schedules.

Community schools represent another model for serving the needs of working families. Open from 7 a.m. -- 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, these schools provide child care, three meals a day, a structured school day, clubs, homework support, arts and athletics for all students. These schools are called community schools because of their commitment to involving parents, businesses and social services groups as educational partners. It's not unusual for a community school to house YMCA programs for students, for example, or to establish a Family Resource Center to provide a variety of support services to parents.

Swing shifts have been used in some districts to alleviate overcrowding when the student population expands too quickly for the space available, as happened in Los Angeles several years ago. But as soon as portable classrooms, new schools and conversions of other buildings make more space available, these districts revert back to previous scheduling practices.

For more information about year-round and community schooling, visit the following web sites:

Year-Round Schooling:
http://cisl.ospi.wednet.edu/CISL/Strategies/YEARROUND.html

School-Family-Community Partnerships:
http://www.cyfc.umn.edu/learn/partner.html

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.