What Is Year-Round Education?

The Seaford School District formed a committee to study year-round education.  The traditional school calendar was developed to allow students to be available in the summers to work on the farms, but few of our students work on farms today.  Our school calendar has not changed with the changes in society and, as reported by one committee studying the use of time, our schools have become “prisoners of time”.  

Year-round education (YRE) reorganizes the school year to provide more continuous learning by dividing the long summer vacation into shorter, more frequent breaks. It does not eliminate the summer vacation, but merely reduces it. Year-round education is an alternative schedule for learning. Students in a year-round program attend the same classes and receive the same amount of instruction as students on a nine-month calendar (usually 180 days). The year-round calendar is organized into instructional blocks and vacation periods that are evenly distributed across 12 months.

Currently the most popular of the year-round calendars is the 45-15 Single-Track Plan. The year is divided into four nine-week terms, separated by four three-week vacations or intersessions. Students and teachers attend school for nine weeks (about 45 days), and then take a three-week vacation (15 days). This sequence of sessions and vacations repeats four times each year, thus providing the usual 36 weeks or about 180 days of school. Four additional weeks each year are allocated to winter holidays, spring vacation, and national, state, or local holidays.  Students attend the same number of days as on the traditional schedule.

During the 1998-99 school year, forty-one states with over 2,856 public schools and 75 private schools served 2,040,611 students with year-round calendars.  The closest school to Seaford with a year-round education program is Delmar Elementary.  Because of the interest in their program, Delmar Elementary has a waiting list for slots in their year-round program.

Seaford’s Year-Round Education Committee plans to share information through newsletters, visit schools with year-round programs, send parents and school staff representatives to the year-round conference, and provide programs through PTA’s.

Parents and staff concerned about year-round calendars should know that the National Association for Year-Round Education recommends that participation in year-round programs be voluntary.    

If you have access to the Internet and want to learn more about year-round education, you are encouraged to visit the National Association for Year-Round Education web site at http://www.NAYRE.org.