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APPROACH
Furthering the benefits mentioned earlier, possibly the most effective approach to bettering disadvantaged school systems regarding academic and practical matters is the multi-track year-round calendar.
Madeline Will defines multi-track systems as placing students in separate groups with staggered vacations, so these groups are not necessarily attending school at the same time; while some are on short vacations some will be in school, and they will rotate throughout the entire year (6).
She asserts that this system can be used as a solution to overcrowding (Will 6). Dr. Cynthia Opheim supports this statement and defends the multi-track system as a cost-saver, arguing that the strategy “may postpone or even prelude the need for building new schools” (118).
Multi-track year-round school schedules can provide high-poverty school districts with a more efficient way to service and educate a large number of students, starting off with a lesser amount of resources than well-off school systems. Many more students can be tended to, while less money will have to go to factors of overcrowding such as school buses and entire school buildings.
Graphic by Sam Pepper, Former Executive Director of the National Association for Year-Round Education. It displays the staggered multi-track year-round schedule for public schools in Wake County, NC.
Dr. Opheim goes on to explain that in her studies, she proves her hypothesis that total costs are reduced by multi-track scheduling (119). Opheim concludes that year-round schooling, especially multi-track, lowers long-term costs for schools, and has “received significant support from principals” of multi-track schools regarding the reduction of overall costs due to the schedule alteration (119).
This approach that she discusses may be ideal for American school systems, because although it may require a substantial amount of work to implement, the multi-track system can be achievable for low-income districts and even more rewarding for them in the end. The catch is a short-term investment, however long-term effects on the schools themselves include less crowding and lower overall expenses.
Beyond costs, the specific multi-track approach to year-round schooling has the ability to provide more opportunities for school district members to succeed. As Dr. Opheim proposes, the scheduling can allow teachers to earn additional income during the frequent breaks if desired, such as substitute teaching or tutoring (116).
While opponents of year-round academic calendars may argue that the lack of long summer vacations seizes from teachers the ability to work supplementary jobs, there is just as much opportunity for this as in a traditional calendar, if not more, during the frequent breaks that a rearranged school year would entail. Teachers are able to work certain part-time jobs in their fields.
Assuming that the whole school district would be in the multi-track schedule, there would likely always be other teachers, students, and schools looking for help during the vacation periods of their tracks.
Charts by James Anthony, creator of the Teacher Burnout Assessment. The graphics display the results of 5,346 assessments completed by teachers, regarding their work hours per week, social lives, fatigue, and overall burnout risk, respectively. These results point to further necessity for a multi-track year-round academic schedule, in order to reduce these overall symptoms of teacher burnout.
Opheim continues to defend the multi-track approach by explaining that it may be able to reduce “administrator burnout, teacher/staff/student absenteeism” and overall tension, and increase “utilization of facilities and student discipline” (116). She supports the claim by reporting that in “Santa Anna, California, the use of sick leave by teachers declined by 25 percent” after switching to a multi-track school calendar (Opheim 116).
Short and focused spurts of work for adults and young students can successfully reduce the overwhelming nature of work that causes individuals to burn out, act up, lose interest, and lack in attendance. It could be that remaining in school year-round provides a sense of permanency while at the same time giving adequate portions of time to recover.
In this way, a year-round academic calendar may enable students and teachers to make better use of the time that they do have in school, because each stretch of school time seems more manageable than the long, condensed portions of school time in the traditional school year.
Generally speaking, multi-track year-round academic calendars can utilize this feature together with the long-term financial benefits, to aid poor and underachieving school districts in simultaneously saving money and increasing the proficiency of their members.
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