Camp and Year-round School

Camping Magazine, July, 2000 by Paul E. Marsh

Opportunity or challenge?

In 1968, Park School, in the Hayward, California, Unified School District, became America's first year-round school. Some camps took this calendar change as a threat to their existence as summer providers of youth development programs. Since that time, organizations that provide summer camp experiences for youth have expressed concern about the impact of year-round school on their livelihood.

However, experience and research suggest that camps are well equipped to participate in year-round education at the community level. In fact, the ability of camp programs to effectively meet the development and social needs of youth places camps in a position to be highly effective, active participants in year-round education. The opportunity lies in the active participation by camps in year-round education through outdoor and environmental education programs. Expansion of these programs will expose a greater percentage of the population to camp's benefits. This exposure in turn provides the opportunity to build additional participation in traditional camp programs.

What Is Year-round School?

The National Association for Year-round Education (NAYRE) defines year-round education as the reorganization of the school calendar to provide more continuous learning. The time block of the traditional extended summer vacation is redistributed in the form of shorter breaks throughout the year. NAYRE's definition is actually the definition of year-round schooling. Year-round education represents a learning process that cannot be confined to the time spent in school.

According to NAYRE's 1998-99 school-year statistics, just over 2 million students took part in year-round school programs. The vast majority of these students attended public elementary schools. In contrast, ACA estimates that in 1999 about 8,500 camps served approximately 9 million American youth. Most campers attend camp for one to two weeks, with some camps offering sessions up to eight weeks in length.

U.S. Department of Education statistics show about 53 million students attended school in the fall of 1998. Thus, year-round schools represent approximately 3.8 percent of the student population; campers represent nearly 17 percent of school-aged youth. While the number of campers has grown rapidly, 8 percent from 1998 to 1999, the number of participants in year-round schools has remained flat for the last few years.

Understanding the year-round school calendar

Year-round school calendars are as numerous as are year-round schools. These calendar variations, called tracks, are broken into a number of in-school weekdays followed by a number of intersession, or vacation, weekdays. Typical track schedules are forty-five or sixty in-school days followed by fifteen or twenty days of intersession, respectively. Multitrack systems stagger tracks, with a given percentage of students out of school at any one time. The majority of year-round schools use a single-track system. Typically, each school adopts its own calendar based on community needs.

Why Year-round School?

Pressure, from declining performance of students in public schools and on state and local government to effectively manage budgets has caused some school districts to look at the feasibility of, or change to, a year-round school program.

The common sense benefit of year-round school is in meeting population growth demands by adjusting the school calendar to keep school facilities full throughout the year. The alternative is building new facilities that would have a traditional utilization pattern. Facility utilization is the primary reason that communities adopt a year-round calendar.

Year-round school is also supposed to generate better learning by making education a more continuous process. This increased effectiveness would be reflected in higher test scores. However, results of research conducted on increased effectiveness are still highly debated. A review of fifteen studies conducted between 1986 and 1996 shows only a very small positive increase in test scores when compared to scores from schools with traditional calendars.

Other justifications for adopting the year-round calendar suggest that social need is a factor. There are social problems related to a lack of parental supervision after school and during traditional length summer vacations. Furthermore, the realities of our education system are declining performance at all levels and a serious deficiency in the ability of our population to read, write, and effectively use language skills.

Year-round School's Impact

Given the statistics, most camps' client base is not likely to be greatly affected by the change in school calendars. If a school system operates with a sixty-day in-school period, that means there will be different children on vacation for a period of twelve weeks over the course of the summer. With less than 4 percent of the school-age population being affected by year-round school and most camps drawing clients from more than one school, the potential impact of year-round school becomes less significant. Furthermore, the traditional staffing base of high school students is very likely to remain intact.