ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 19, 1996 TAG: 9612190065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
Roanoke may take the year-round school concept a step further than Roanoke County by adding another month of classes.
Roanoke County's Hidden Valley Junior High plans to begin a year-round option next year that would have 180 days.
But Roanoke is considering a pilot year-round school project that calls for children to go to school 200 days a year.
Superintendent Wayne Harris said school officials have begun planning for a year-round calendar at one elementary school during the 1998-99 school year.
He has included $7,500 in next year's budget to plan the pilot project. The school has not been identified.
Hidden Valley has developed a so-called 45-15 plan that calls for students to attend school for nine weeks (45 days) and be off three weeks. The pattern would start in July and continue throughout the year.
Harris said the city is considering a schedule that calls for children to go to school for eight weeks, followed by a two-week break.
The school year in most industrialized countries is longer than in the United States. Japanese students go to school 220 days a year; South Korea, 220; Germany, 210; and Britain, 192. Students in most of these countries score higher than American students on international tests in math, science and reading.
Critics of the American education system contend that the 180-day school calendar is outdated and that a longer school year is needed to prepare students to compete in the global economy.
In a report last year, the U.S. Department of Education's National Commission on Time and Learning described the six-hour school day and 180-day calendar as an "unacknowledged design flaw in American education that should be relegated to museums, an exhibit from our past."
In Buena Vista, which adopted a year-round plan more than two decades ago, students go to school 218 days a year.
Buena Vista's schedule has improved the academic achievement of students, created a better attitude toward schools and increased the number of students who earn college credits while in high school, said Superintendent James Bradford Jr.
Roanoke school officials have visited an elementary school in Danville where a year-round schedule is being used.
Harris said it's too early to say whether Roanoke will expand the year-round plan to other elementary schools if the pilot project is successful.
Hidden Valley plans to offer students a choice between the year-round plan and the traditional schedule within the same school.
But Harris said Roanoke might not offer both options within the pilot elementary school. Instead, children who wanted to remain with a traditional schedule probably could attend another school.
Roanoke wants to try the year-round school plan because it has proven successful in improving student performance, he said.
Nationwide, nearly 2,300 schools with 1.6 million students operate on a year-round schedule. More than half of those schools are in California and Texas.
Only a few schools in Virginia offer the option, although Buena Vista was a pioneer in the year-round movement.
Some school systems have used the year-round concept to save money and relieve overcrowding without building more schools, but others have adopted it mainly for academic reasons.
Advocates of year-round schools say tradition is a major obstacle to the concept.
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