2 southwest Missouri school districts consider year-round schedules

About 14 miles northeast of Springfield, Mo., Fair Grove is a bedroom community that has had a growth spurt over the past decade. The city, with a population topping 1,400 people last year, has grown about 30 percent since 2000.

So has the Fair Grove School District. And with the population boom come educational challenges.

Fair Grove schools superintendent John Link said the district of about 1,100 students has seen its at-risk population -- children eligible for free and reduced meals, transients and academically challenged pupils -- increase by about 100 students in the past three years.

"It seems like a lot of lower socioeconomic families are moving in from Springfield, and we have to ask ourselves, 'Are we meeting our students' needs?' We felt like it was a conversation we needed to have with our community," Link said.

The school district is mulling a modified school year calendar, also referred to as year-round schooling, mainly as a means to better serve at-risk students.

While there are varying forms, the idea behind the modified or balanced calendar is to replace the long summer break with short cycles of attendance. In Fair Grove's case, one proposal calls for eight-week quarters, broken up by extended breaks. The hope, Link said, is to alleviate students' learning loss that occurs over the summer.

Not far from Fair Grove, the Strafford School District plans to host a community meeting later this month on a modified calendar. The plan is similar to other proposals, with four weeks taken out of the summer break and placed at the end of each quarter, according to a district letter to the community. Again, the idea is to attack summer knowledge drain.

"Many of our younger students regressed up to two grade levels on their reading ability scores," the letter says.

Fair Grove and Strafford appear to be the only districts in the state seriously studying the concept. An official at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said she is unaware of any other districts in the state that have implemented or are looking into modified calendars. Southeast Missouri administrators say they are curious to see how things pan out.

"We have never really given it serious thought or researched it that much, at least in my time here," said Jim Welker, superintendent of the Cape Girardeau School District. "It is something we might be interested to look at."

Cape Girardeau School Board member Don Call, a former superintendent of Strafford schools, brought the proposals to the attention of board members last month.

"Whether or not this would work in Cape Girardeau is not clear to me at this point," he said in an e-mail, adding "the pursuit of improved learning situations for our students could lead our district, as well as other school districts, to try new and different processes."

Lessons learned

The Francis Howell School District in St. Charles County, Mo., launched a year-round school calendar in 1969. Explosive growth necessitated the district make the most out of its limited building space, so it rotated students through on nine-week schedules. But the district, one official said, realized a few years ago that it needed to align its elementary schools with the middle and high schools' more traditional calendars.

"Like many districts, we are struggling with financial problems and we find ourselves looking for ways to trim our budget," said Steve Griggs, chief human resources officer for the district. Transportation costs and other expenses were major considerations.

About a month ago, the school board decided to move the elementary to a more traditional calendar. District officials, Griggs said, looked at a variety of studies and compared achievement data to that of like school districts in the region.

"What we found was there really was no demonstrable difference between us," Griggs said. "No body of research shows year-round education is better."

Expanded learning

Year-round education in many cases is a misnomer. Francis Howell didn't add any days to its state-mandated minimum calendar year of 174 days. Year-round education is more about reorganizing the school year to break up the long summer vacation.

There is, however, evidence that suggests extending the school year and the school day helps achievement.

"Proficiency rates in language arts and math are growing at a faster rate than the state average," said Isabel Owen, of the Center for American Progress, a not-for-profit think tank.

While the results of expanded learning time may be apparent, the funding to cover the added expense in many cash-strapped states is not.

And year-round education comes with complications, such as matching extracurricular schedules. Fair Grove's Link said a July start to the school year would interfere with the rural community's fair and Christian camp schedules. Longer breaks between quarters, Link said, could leave parents without child care.

That's why Fair Grove may change the proposed school calendar, like starting the year a few days early. Link said much depends on state funding for summer school next year.

He said whatever plan the district employs, it must be fully considered by the community.

"It's a change of pretty significant magnitude for a rural school district," Link said.

mkittle@semissourian.com

388-3627