DC Public and charter - is there interest in year round school?

[Anonymous]

I know about the 10 schools in DC who go year round but I'm wondering if there is talk in expanding this model at other public or even charter schools.

[Anonymous]

Not at my DCPS. There'd be a riot.

[Anonymous]

At DCPS schools, you have to deal with
a) teachers, their contracts, and their unions
b) some families won't like it, and if it's their in-boundary school, they aren't guaranteed another choice (this could be solved by pairing a traditional and an extended-year school, the way that kids zoned for bilingual schools have an English-only alternative)

EL Haynes is a year-round charter school. Several other schools (Stokes, for one) offer a lot of summer programming.

At all schools, finding staff willing to work year-round is a problem. Some schools also have facilities issues (poor AC, unshaded playgrounds) and/or want to use the summer to make renovations.

It strikes me that many wealthy families would dislike a year-round school (possibly unless the summer programming was basically a fancy summer camp) and it could hurt the economic diversity of a school. Kids who have poor attendance during a traditional school year would probably show up even less during the summer. And having vacation at unusual times of year could be problematic for families that don't have easy access to child care.

[Anonymous]

No interest from my family!

[Anonymous]

Two parents who work full time and kids in a charter. I'd absolutely consider it if all the teacher and facility things were worked out. Some say higher SES wouldn't like, but I think that's silly; many would like to be able to take vacations as less peak times.

[Anonymous]

AT less peak times, not "as"

[Anonymous]

I would be interested if the summer were high quality or optional. I need to use summer to compensate for the shortcomings of the school, unfortunately.

I do have a friend who teaches at a year round school, and she likes the extra income. It really cuts into professional development time, though, makes it hard to work on master's degree or whatever. I wouldn't assume teachers are universally against it.

[Anonymous]

Some dcps schools offer summer school, and kids from many schools enroll but definitely a lot of them go to that school during the traditional year. I think that's a good way to do it.

[Anonymous]

I wish! I seriously panic at the idea of having to find camps and such for the whole summer. I feel bad for my kid having to shuttle to random places, but I can't afford to not work for the summer and wouldnt be able to request that from my job anyway.

[Anonymous]

DCPS - 100% against

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two parents who work full time and kids in a charter. I'd absolutely consider it if all the teacher and facility things were worked out. Some say higher SES wouldn't like, but I think that's silly; many would like to be able to take vacations as less peak times.

this. but we just didn't like EL Haynes that much to rank it very high. Love the idea of vacations through the school year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish! I seriously panic at the idea of having to find camps and such for the whole summer. I feel bad for my kid having to shuttle to random places, but I can't afford to not work for the summer and wouldnt be able to request that from my job anyway.

But just think about those random weeks off when there are no camp offerings. I have a friend whose son goes to a year round school and she said that is the toughest part, trying to find something for her kid to do during those random weeks off during the year that are not in the summer. She said the school does not do a good job of offering any type of out of school programming during those weeks for parents that need to take advantage of it.

[Anonymous]

I have friends who have kids in North Carolina in year-round school. They love it! But all the camps in the area are set up with that in mind. They get 4-5 weeks off in the summer I think (so they could do sleep away camp for ex). But then they start up again...and the camps exist. But it would have to be a wholesale change. if so I would buy it!

But the system here is so fractured (1/2 charter), I don't think it could happen.

[Anonymous]

Haynes uses springboard for inter-session programming now. http://www.elhaynes.org/year-round-programs

In their early years the school planned and offered programming for those weeks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish! I seriously panic at the idea of having to find camps and such for the whole summer. I feel bad for my kid having to shuttle to random places, but I can't afford to not work for the summer and wouldnt be able to request that from my job anyway.

But just think about those random weeks off when there are no camp offerings. I have a friend whose son goes to a year round school and she said that is the toughest part, trying to find something for her kid to do during those random weeks off during the year that are not in the summer. She said the school does not do a good job of offering any type of out of school programming during those weeks for parents that need to take advantage of it.

My child goes to an extended year school. We had camp offered at school during fall break this year. There won't be camp during winter break, but I don't know of any other schools that have camp during winter break. I think the school is planning to have camp during spring break as well. During the summer, we need a lot less camp than my friends do.

As for the PP talking about options, my understanding is that DCPS actually does have an option for this. We are at HD Cooke, for example, and I was told that IB families who don't want extended year have a right to attend Marie Reed. NOT the dual language program, before anyone gets excited. I don't have confirmation from central office about this because we love extended year and had a blast on vacation last week, but I am told that there is a similar exemption for IB families of dual language schools who want a monolingual school.