Year Round Schooling

My brother in law (who is also a teacher) asked me the other week if I had heard what they were doing in some schools in Edmonton where they were switching the yearly schedule up so that students wouldn't get such a long break in the summer (where a lot of retention is lost) and instead have year round schooling with more frequent (but shorter breaks).  I hadn't heard of it but I have talked about it before...to read what my opinion was click here.

And what do I think now?

I still think it's a great idea!  So much retention can be lost over the summer holidays and shortening them will definitely (in my opinion) help with this.  Plus, what they are trying out this year is only shortening the summer break by a little bit.  They still get 5 weeks of holidays.

There is at least one downside that I can think of that I hadn't previously discussed though. 

If it were province wide it might be hard to vacation places within your province as everyone will have that same shorter time span to do all their typical summer holiday things.  Luckily, in Edmonton's case they are just doing it in 3 schools so I can't see 3 schools worth of families booking up camp grounds and overcrowding water parks nearby.  If it were hundreds of schools that get the same 5 weeks off it might be a problem though.  A possible solution... stagger the summer holidays so that different divisions in the province start the holidays at different times.  If you stagger it by divisions it will likely help with siblings who attend different schools (but remain in the same division) still having the same break.

Otherwise, I'm all for it.  

I like that there is 2 weeks at spring break especially.  This means that if you want to go away somewhere hot (like Mexico) during your break you don't have to jet off the first Saturday and quickly fly back a week later and jump right back into school.  You can leave on a Tuesday instead (which might even make a vacation less expensive) and come back with still a few days before school is back in session.

I kind of wish they would have given a bit extra time at Christmas though.  It just always feels like I'm super swamped with family things to do (and this is usually when I get sick as well) that once all the gatherings are done and I'm starting to feel better it's already time to go back to school.  

Here is the article I've referenced in this post

Anyways, what do you think?  Are you on board with year round schooling?