Year-round school is a heavily debated topic, with strong arguments for both sides. Most schools in the US use the nine-month calendar, but almost 133,000 schools run year-long. It might sound awful, to lose your summer break, but breaks are just distributed around the year more evenly. The schools give the same amount of learning days, just spread out longer.

PROS:

• Some students may be having trouble at home, whether it’s parent issues or money. During the summer break, struggling parents have to take care of their child for the whole day, or pay a ton of money for camps. Year-round allows that time to disappear and helps parents who can’t take care of their children. This also takes away most boredom kids might have during breaks.
• Often, after the summer, kids will have forgotten a lot of what they learned the previous year. This is often called the ‘summer slide.’ If year-round schooling was used, students wouldn’t lose very much. Teachers could spend much less time reviewing everything each year and could get more time for more important topics later on.
• Teachers often get a low salary, and utilizing the nine-month calendar means they don’t get paid over the summer. Year-long school gives them a full salary, so they can constantly get paid.
• Having a super long summer break means other breaks are much shorter. It prevents parents from going on larger-scale trips that require more time. If all of the breaks were the same length, each one could be longer. This would mean each one would be around 3-4 weeks long. Trips would have much more time to do much larger scale things. Breaks would also be more frequent.
• Daniel Jones, a public high school teacher and doctoral student in educational leadership at St Louis University, says he suspects that longer breaks during the school year could have a positive effect on students’ mental health, particularly in a post-pandemic world.
•  Latoya Dixon, assistant superintendent of academic innovation and professional learning at York School District 1 in South Carolina, said, “In terms of instruction, a student who takes Algebra I first semester receives 87 days of instruction, versus a student who takes Algebra I second semester gets 93 days.” In a balanced calendar year, the semesters would be more balanced.

CONS:

• Summer break is always thought of as a much-needed time to relax, both for teachers and students. Without this time, everyone loses a ton of time to themselves that they could use however they want.
• Most summer camps run by the nine-month schedule, not the year-round, so students would most likely miss out on that kind of experience. Many teens also need summer jobs to help their parents with money. Kids could miss out on all sorts of summer sports teams, and wouldn’t meet as many new people.
• Costs for the school are much higher when they’re run year-round. Things like the air conditioning and heating, or the electricity bill, would cost a ton more to run through the summer. Schools would also have to pay the staff more during the year, which may be good for them, but not for the school.
• This idea has its ups and downs, but many people are still pretty hesitant about it. If a school just started up as year-round, it might not get as many people for a while, which would be terrible for the school. They still would have to spend the same amount on air-conditioning, etc., but they get less money from enrolling students. Eventually, they might not be able to keep the school running.
• Siblings might have different schedules than each other, which could make planning vacations and camps a whole lot more complicated. Kids would be at school on different days, which would be very inconvenient for parents.

RELATED STORIES

https://ace.edu/blog/the-pros-cons-of-year-round-school/

https://www.verywellfamily.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-year-round-school-621001

https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-year-round-school-calendars

https://www.scholastic.com/parents/school-success/school-involvement/pros-and-cons-year-round-schools.html

https://education.seattlepi.com/benefits-disadvantages-allyear-school-3045.html

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https://www.lcsedu.net/ourschools/year-round-elementary-school