Early August means ‘school’s in’ for some

At Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church last week, the school bell rang, fresh packages of pencils were opened and brand-new kindergartners met the day with mixed emotions.

The first week of August means the first day of school at Graham Road and a half-dozen other Fairfax County elementary schools that are on a modified school-year calendar. While students are only required to attend school for the same number of days as the rest of the county, the schedule is divided into nine-week sessions with optional, but academically enriching, two- or three-week intersessions in between. The students have a summer break of about six weeks.

Several schools in Alexandria are on a similar calendar, as is the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in the District.

Nationwide, about 7,000 schools are on the modified schedule — called a year-round calendar in some districts. It long has been in place in many districts in California and Texas, and this year children in 132 Chicago public schools will move to such a schedule.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said last spring he is in favor of more American schoolchildren taking part in year-round school.

“Go ahead and boo me,” Mr. Duncan told an assembly of middle- and high-school students at a public school in Denver last spring. “I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short and our school year is too short. You’re competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; 11, 12 months a year.”

The prospect of such a schedule has met with mixed reviews, especially at a time when many public schools are having to trim budgets and meet basic goals. Some critics say summer should be for creative loafing, camp and family time. Proponents say the reality for many children is far from that — too much summer time is spent unsupervised or in front of a TV, just when children need academic stimulation to stay at grade level.

Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, studied more than 800 inner-city students for more than 20 years. His findings: By ninth grade, low-income students had fallen 3½ grade levels behind their peers. Most of the gap was due to learning loss over the summer, Mr. Alexander said.

Molly Bensinger-Lacy, principal at Graham Road, says the modified calendar has been a boost to her school. In fact, when the modified calendar appeared to be in jeopardy this year due to county budget cuts, school staff lobbied to keep the program. Ms. Bensinger-Lacy says the school is using some of its federal stimulus money to fill in some of the gaps.

“We’ve lived to go on another year,” she says. “It is a popular program, and we have been doing it at Graham Road long enough so they are used to it. We get five extra weeks of instruction. That benefits the students, and the parents get the added benefit of there is a safe and affordable place for their children to be.”

Eighty-one percent of the students at Graham Road qualify for free or reduced lunch, and a similarly large portion come from homes where English is a second language.

“The lengthy summer was pretty devastating for the kids as to what skills they lost,” Ms. Bensinger-Lacy says. “There has been a dramatic difference in what children come back with when we return in August compared to when we come back in September.

Five years ago, Graham Road was “accredited with warning” by the state of Virginia, meaning it had not made adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind statute. These days, Graham Road is recognized as a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon School because of its dramatic progress.

At most schools with a year-round calendar, there is a clear distinction between the nine-week school sessions and the shorter intersessions. The optional intersessions try to be innovative. At Graham Road, for instance, there are the typical classes that boost reading and math skills, but also classes taught by members of the Washington Performing Arts Society.

At Franconia Elementary, Carylin Waterval’s fourth-grader has participated in creative math classes and cooking classes during intersession.

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