Year-round schooling push on the horizon
By Mannix Porterfield
REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER
CHARLESTON — Look for another spirited debate under the Capitol dome in January over the amount of time West Virginia students spend in school.
And this time around the block, expect a push for year-round schooling.
Lawmakers failed to agree this year on a school calendar bill, one that Gov. Joe Manchin strongly backed in an effort to cement a 180-day year, after the two houses split over the details and neither would yield to the other.
As the 2009 session wound down, the Senate stuck to its belief that the first semester must end by Christmas, and refused to back off from its bid to abandon the traditional start and finish of a school year. That left the calendar issue in limbo.
“The buzz word now is year-round schooling,” mused Delegate Brady Paxton, D-Putnam, a veteran educator, as he sat in his House seat, awaiting the start of a legislative interims committee meeting last week.
“It pops up about every 10 years.”
Paxton and two others with backgrounds in education — Delegate Linda Sumner, R-Raleigh, a retired civics and history instructor in Beckley, and Delegate Rick Moye, D-Raleigh, still an active bus driver — are on the same page when it comes to 12-month schooling.
Prove it works, and they’ll sign on.
“In the inner city, where kids can walk or the parents can drive a couple of blocks and let them off, it’s fine,” Paxton says.
One example used on both sides of the issue is Piedmont Elementary in Charleston.
Test results are one thing, but building maintenance, family vacations and athletic programs are other considerations that seem to be forgotten by the proponents, Paxton said.
“For years, the summer vacation is what the citizens gauge their year by,” he said.
For a typical West Virginian, the favorite spot to visit is Myrtle Beach, and the year often is built around hitting the surf and sand, Paxton pointed out.
Sumner expects another long look in the House Education Committee at the school calendar, and the stage was set the past week in an interims committee with a report on how other states deal with it.
Most states impose a 180-day calendar, according to a report issued by the Southern Regional Education Board, “and that seems to be the norm,” Sumner said.
An examination of the four-day week, as some states employ, largely in rural areas in deference to predictable harsh weather, year-round school and the 180-day year appears to show nothing is superior to the others, Sumner said.
“There is not enough evidence that one way is better than the other way,” she said.
Moye and Sumner say the Legislature doesn’t need to enact any special legislation to provide for year-round schooling since counties already can allow it.
“If a county is interested in that, then they have the option to look into it,” Sumner said.
“I support whatever is better for the county and for the students living in that area, whichever calendar it would be. I would leave it up to the individual 55 counties in West Virginia. Needs are diverse, especially when you compare climate. So I think that needs to be basically a local decision.”
Moye likewise feels such decisions should be in the hands of counties.
“They don’t need any further legislation,” he said.
“If they choose to adopt a year-round calendar, they can do it. If they want to do it for a particular school, or two or three schools, they can do that. And they don’t need any more legislation to do that ...”
Moye isn’t convinced year-round school is all that advantageous.
“From what I’ve been told, there was no noticeable improvement in the academics of the two schools in Kanawha County,” he said.
Moye is another lawmaker concerned about the potential disruption to family life with regard to summer vacations if children are obligated to be in the classroom.
“There would definitely be some adjusting to do,” he said.
“Everybody’s summer schedule is planned around being off from school. For some people, it might work better if their children are in school, as far as not needing child care every day. For others, it would be a real problem in planning vacations. If there is proof that a year-round calendar is better, or a longer school year is better, we’re foolish not to go it. But if there is no proof that it is better, which seems to be the case, you have to ask why are we doing it.”
Paxton shares the same basic sentiment: Show me the proof.
Not only would vacations be put in jeopardy, but he pointed to the maintenance of buildings that would be ongoing, and he wonders how schools would deal with athletic programs.
In his tenure as an educator and legislator, he has witnessed a number of ideas that have come and gone.
One did away with grades but merely assigned students to read a book. Both pre- and post-read tests were given.
“If you passed the post-test, you went on,” he said. “If you didn’t, you read it again. You read it until you got it right. Well, some of them never got it right, so that didn’t work. They’re still in school. Sixty-eight years old and still in the second grade.”
That was vintage Paxton humor, but he made his point — that education has sampled a variety of programs that have long since been abandoned.
“They built a school in Cross Lanes one time that had no walls,” he recalled.
“They called it learning without walls. They had a row of books between classrooms. The trouble with that, you look and have 30 students. You draw something on the board or say something, look back and you have 20 students. You get them and they say, ‘Well, I got such and such this period.’ You had to go back and put the walls back up.”
Paxton is willing to consider year-round schooling, but he wants some strong proof that it works.
“The jury is still out on it,” he said. “If they can prove it to me, then I’m with them. Until they do that, I want to keep it the way it is.”