Year-Round Schools

Will the Trend Catch On?

By Jill Oestreicher Gross

What Did YOU Do Last Summer?

This month, teachers everywhere will invite their students to answer that classic first-day-of-school question: How did you spend your summer vacation? But at the Saltonstall School in Salem, Massachusetts, the teachers already know the answer. After all, the students spent most of the summer with them.

The Saltonstall School is the only public school in Massachusetts offering a year-round education. Since 1995, Saltonstall, which serves students from kindergarten through grade 8, has run in six-week sessions year-round with a one-week break in between. Students are off for a week in October, December, February and April. They also have a two-week break in June, and they get the month of August off. But they’re in school for all of July, learning and studying in an old school building without air conditioning.

And despite what some might think sounds like every kid’s worst nightmare, there’s a waiting list to get into the Saltonstall in nearly every grade.

“July is still about learning,” says Justine Bassett, the parent of 9-year-old boy-girl twins at Saltonstall. “You’ve got to shift your way of thinking about it. The more time spent on learning is not a bad thing.”

No Summer Learning Loss

Close to two million students nationwide are enrolled in year-round education, says Charles Ballinger, director emeritus of the National Association for Year-Round Education, a national group that advocates for shorter summer breaks. That number, gleaned from a 2007 survey the NAYRE conducted, has been on the rise since the first year-round schools started decades ago.

Nearly 500 schools in 30 states are year-round, according to data on the NAYRE website. California leads the U.S. in year-round schools, followed by Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas.

Typically, a year-round education means that children attend school during some or most of the summer, with one- or two-week breaks throughout the school year instead of one long summer break. Other types of year-round education include a multi-track system, where different groups of students attend class on a staggered schedule.