Rolling School Year Calendar

1. Rolling School Year Calendar Appoquinimink School District Jan. 2009

2. Members of Committee Jim Comegys Don Davis Sharon Pepukayi Quinn Johnson Holly Grandfield Donna Kolakowski Shannon Griffin Traci Fraley

3. What is the Charge of the Committee? The charge of this committee is to thoroughly investigate models of Rolling School Calendars as a means to maximize instruction, provide enrichment opportunities and increase student achievement.

4. What is Balance School Year? • Rearranging the traditional September to June school year so the standard instructional period is distributed better throughout the year with regularly scheduled breaks. These breaks can be utilized for remediation, enrichment, and/or vacation. There are a variety of ways this can be accomplished.

5. Potential Benefits of a continuous education calendar: • Learning is not disrupted by an extended summer break. • Enrichment provided during intersessions can support and enhance achievement for all students • Remediation is offered immediately following each session, rather than just during the summer. • Many teachers working in year-round school systems report that both teachers and students are typically enthusiastic, refreshed, and ready to learn as they return from intersessions.

6. New Barriers/Obstacles/Changes that occurred during our exploration • Budget complications • Summer School funding • Changes to DSTP and AYP • Implementation of RTI • Staffing during intersession

7. Findings • We found research to support RSCY being well received in many places • The committee did not find substantial evidence that student achievement increases due to a balanced calendar. The findings are scattered and non-conclusive. • Von Hipple study reports 1% difference in test scores from Balanced to traditional (science daily article aug. 2007)

8. Schools on single track balanced calendars out performed traditional tracks at all levels in CA, with significant impact for LEP and low SES students (Stenvall and Stenvall 2000) • Study reports No significant achievement differences in SC (Evaluation Brief 2000)

9. Conclusions • Balanced calendars provide remediation, but also offer variety of enrichment opportunities, like OPTIONS weeks in some schools • Reorganizing of time and structures of traditional calendars can be without going to RSYC • The committee discussed whether the need to remediate immediately was strong enough in our district. We believed RTI would impact this need substantially

10. TheAppoquinimink School District Year-Round Education Committee proposes... • We did not find enough benefit to disrupting the current school calendar. We do recommend working with the calendar committee and the district to provide extended periods for teacher collaboration, student enhancement and remediation by blending a traditional and a rolling school year calendar. We still believe that we can reorganize the current calendar to improve education for each student.

11. What would we weave into our current calendar? • Appoquinimink could add several days by starting earlier and ending later. • Talent Development time could be pooled into an options block based on school need. • RTI is already driving immediate remediation • Spacing out inservice during the school year to allow for best practices of instruction to occur (for example using 1/2 days for students with planning time for teacher could be a possibility )