CALGARY – The most exciting thing about going back to school for six-year-old Stephani Papp was getting a new lunch box.
Never mind that this Grade 1 student’s first day was July 22 at Canada’s first year-round, multi-track school called Riverbend Elementary.
For her mother Jaye, the hardest thing about sending her daughter off to school in July was shopping for school supplies.
“Do you know how hard it is to find a lunch box this time of year?”
Grade 5 student Teresa Hook said the early start is good because, “you don’t have to wait so long for vacations.”
Read Also
U.S. farm group supports supply management
U.S. grassroots farm advocacy group pushing new agriculture legislation that would move towards supply management like Canada has for dairy industry
The North American school year is based on a farming calendar when children were once needed at home to help. This is not necessary in cities facing tight school board budgets and sprawling suburbs demanding new schools.
Ruin vacations?
Yet when the concept of year-round schooling was first mentioned, some families balked, saying it would destroy their summer vacations.
When parents in Calgary’s southeastern community had a chance to vote on the question, 75 percent favored year-round schooling.
They went even farther by opting for “multi-track” schooling, which means four groups of children will attend school on a staggered entry basis. Parents had the option of sending their children here or to bus them to a traditional school. As a pilot project, the school’s results will be evaluated at the end of three years, said principal Connie Zergler.
Children do not actually attend school year-round. The first group started July 22, the next group will start Aug. 19, followed by the last two groups in September. Terms are 12 weeks long with breaks of two to three weeks. There is a common three-week vacation in July and two weeks at Christmas.
A multi-track year-round school can accept 25 percent more children. About 500 children are enrolled here with 400 in the school at any given time.
“A quarter of the students are always on vacation,” said Zergler, whose last job was rearranging the calendar year at another Calgary elementary school.
“You have to rethink the whole calendar year,” she said.
The curriculum will be split into blocks and the school day at Riverbend is slightly longer because children only attend 169 days.
Each track has its own teachers and rather than vice-principals, there will be five administrative track leaders.
12 test projects
There are 12 Calgary schools experimenting with different calendar years by starting earlier in August or by offering year-round schooling.
Education minister Gary Mar sees a year-round school as one way to ease pressure on the province and school boards to build more schools, renovate or buy portable classrooms.
“Requirements for capital are outpacing the budgets by four to one,” he said on opening day at Riverbend.
Studies on year-round education show teachers like the system because lesson planning is easier when arranged in shorter blocks. American studies report students retain more and spend less time reviewing.
“Right now, teachers say September is kind of a write-off because they spent all the time reviewing,” said Mar.
A University of Calgary study of a year-round junior high school (Grades 7-9) will be finished this fall. School board officials say if the study shows favorable results, more Calgary communities may consider the new format.
At Innisfail’s John Wilson Elementary and Chinook Centre schools, students returned to a single-track year-round calendar on July 29. One high school class in Innisfail is also experimenting with the concept.
