Year round school? Charter? Traditional? Magnet? If you are exploring Wake County Pubic School System (WCPSS) you know that the system is complicated and full of options. Options are a good thing to have – though it brings its own stress. Many people around the around the country have to attend the school where they are zoned. If you are unsatisfied with the school in your zone, you have no other options in the public school system. Most places are set up that way – which drives real estate prices in “good” school zones up significantly so that only the affluent can afford it. Which is problematic, but not really the focus of this blog so I won’t digress.

But the word “option” is a bit misleading. MANY parents apply for calendar, magnet and charter options and do not get accepted. You may want to keep that in mind if you are unhappy with your base school option.

If you need a refresher on how our school system works, or if you have no idea what so ever (I was there just a year ago!) then check out my blog on the basics here.

So how do multi-track year round schools work? A school has 4 tracks, only 3 of them are in session at any given time. Students are in a few weeks (roughly 9 – depending on the track) and then out for 3 weeks. The school year starts in July and ends late June. All students are out for July 4th week, Christmas and Thanksgiving breaks.

So why did we pick a year round school?

• You can travel during off-peak vacation times. So next year we may go to Disney the first of November. Or late winter. Year round schools allow for vacations throughout the year, not just during the summer. This was huge for our family – we love to travel and having multiple options to travel during the year. We could have been sold on year round schools with this benefit alone.
• Avoid the summer slump. Summer slump is the regression of learning that occurs in traditional calender schools. It results in approximately 1 month re-learning skills from previous year in the beginning of a new school year, with math skills taking the greatest hit. You can read more about it in this blog from Psychology Today. You simply don’t have that in year round schools because the breaks are 3-5 weeks tops. During track outs I am not hounding my children to practice skills, they can enjoy their time off. Engage in free play. Because they aren’t going to be off long enough to forget things. One mom I spoke to during my research said that when they switched their child from a traditional calender (summers off) to a year round school his grades improved drastically. In their case, the summer slump hit their child really hard despite their best efforts to counter act it.
• Get extra help when needed. So in the typical traditional school year, summer school is used when a student needs additional instruction in a subject. But if your student starts falling behind in math in, say October, then do you want to wait for summer school? In year round school you can get focused attention on a particular subject during the academic year, at the next track out.
• Stay in a routine. Both my husband and I do freelance type work, bringing a lot of flexibility to our schedules. But with that flexibility comes a lack of structure. This past summer neither child was in school (with the exception of a couple of weeks) and at first it was great. But after a while the lack of structure took its toll. For our family having brief periods  without structure but 9 weeks with structure works really well for us. And it works better for our children too.
• Pay for camps for 3 weeks at a time vs. 12 weeks. We haven’t done camps at this point, but I talked to several parents who are on year round schedules because paying for camps/childcare x 12 weeks can be burdensome financially. Although I have heard there are more camp options in the summer, fewer track out camp options during the school year. Finding non-summer track out camps may be more challenging.
• Ease school overcrowding. In a multi-track year round school, only 75% are in session at any given time. A year round school can absorb more students (from a building capacity standpoint) than traditional calendar students where everyone is in session at the same time. A couple of year round specials teachers I spoke to were also able to take 12 month positions vs. 10 positions and thus make more money.
• Want to know more about year round schools? Check out the National Education Associations Research spotlight here.

As with anything, there are cons to Year round schooling, although for us the good outweighs the bad. But these are things that you would need to consider for your family.

• You will likely end of up with children on different schedules, if you have more than one child. This could be problematic. Right now it’s not a huge deal, my youngest is in preschool and we can take him out of school when my daughter tracks out for vacation. But at some point I’ll have an 8th grader and a 10th grader. Since high schools are not on year round schedules, we’re going to have a couple of years of trying to coordinate multiple schedules for family time and travel.
• Some children have difficulty with the transitions.  I can personally attest to this – Our daughter had a difficult timei adjusting to not being in school during our first track out. But to be fair, we are on track 3 and were only in school a couple of weeks before the first track out. I’m hoping this improves as we are in school for 9 weeks. Time will till. Regardless, some children may have difficulty with track in/out every few weeks, especially those who need consistent structure.
• Magnet schools are not year round. A small handful of them are a modified a, a hybrid between traditional and modified. But most are a traditional calendar.
• More Saturday school make up days in year round. During hurricane florence, initially WCPSS scheduled year round schools for 3 make up saturdays, 2 of them in December. After an outcry from teachers and parents, this was changed to 1 make up saturday and extending 2 early release days to full days of instuction. Occasionally traditional schools have Saturday school as well, although it is not as often. The year round schedule is tight, and difficult to add in make up days. Traditional schools can often use teacher work days as make ups.

So, as with most things a year round schedule won’t fit for everyone. I’ll admit it seems weird to me that my children will only have 1 week off between grades. It’s so foriegn to what most (if not all) of us had growing up. But so are classrooms with flexible seatings and every child having a screen. So I would encourage you to consider a year round school, it might be a great fit.

According to a rising kindergartener facebook group poll, for the 2018/19 school year most people did NOT get into year round school when they applied for their calendar option. I have also heard rumors that maybe Wake Co was trying to move away from year round schooling- but this rumor is nothing I’ve been able to confirm. The application process is changed for the 2019/2020 school year and it will be interesting to see how this changes year round school acceptance.