Students Return To School

EASTSIDE, MATHIAS OPEN TODAY

Patty Spradlin, right, a kindergarten teacher at Joe Mathias Elementary School in Rogers, and her sister, Julie Storey, work Friday to prepare Spradlin’s classroom for students. The continuous learning schools in Rogers resumes class today.
Patty Spradlin, right, a kindergarten teacher at Joe Mathias Elementary School in Rogers, and her sister, Julie Storey, work Friday to prepare Spradlin’s classroom for students. The continuous learning schools in Rogers resumes class today.

— Two Rogers schools start class today, while other students are still spending their days at parks and pools.

Students in those two schools are also scheduled to end the year three weeks later than most schools, on June 8, 2011.

That calendar gives students and teachers a chance to recuperate during the school year, and may help negate the problem of students forgetting material over a long summer break, educators said.

Joe Mathias and Eastside elementary schools are on the district’s so-called “continuous learning calendar.” Students have 178 school days per year, the same as those attending schools on traditional calendars. But they have more, shorter breaks spread throughout the year and a shorter summer vacation.

Mathias, which this year has a new principal and a new assistant principal, has been on the alternative calendar since 2006, Ashley Siwiec, a district spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. Eastside has been year-round since 2004.

Betsy Kinkade is the new principal at Mathias and Korienne Toney is the new assistant principal.

Virginia Abernathy, the district’s assistant superintendent for elementary curriculum and instruction, said the alternative calendar schools have not shown a significant improvement in test scores over schools with conventional calendars.

For example, in fifth-grade literacy Benchmark exams, Eastside students scored about the same as the district average.

In 2010, 85 percent of Eastside fifth-graders scored advanced or proficient on the literacy test, compared with 80 percent of the district’s fifth-graders.

At Mathias, which has more low-income students and non-native English speakers than Eastside, 67 percent of students scored proficient or advanced.

But Abernathy said small breaks spread throughout the year seem good for the schools’ parents, teachers and students.

“The interim breaks give them a chance to renew and be ready to go again,” Abernathy said. “Sometimes the children get tired and weary.”

The schools draw students from designated boundaries, the same as other public schools. But students in the schools’ enrollment areas can opt to go to Rogers schools with traditional calendars.

Students in the enrollment areas of other Rogers schools can also apply to go to the continuous learning schools. Siwiec said those requests are almost always granted.

Abernathy said four or five students this year have not yet been accepted as transfers into the two year-round schools.

Siwiec said enrollment in the schools is generally steady, with roughly the same number of students opting in and out of the schools.

Jennifer Rowe, the parent of a fourth-grade student at Eastside, said she doesn’t work, but thought the shorter vacations would be easier for working parents to handle.

She also said the short summer break seems to help her son, Hunter Burkes, stay sharp for when he goes back to school.

“When I went to school, when I’d come back from summer break, it was like I had to relearn everything,” she said.

Cheryl Brown, a first-grade teacher at Mathias who has also taught at traditional calendar schools, said she noticed an improvement in students’ retention on the year-round calendar. She also said the calendar opens up some opportunities for struggling students, such as two-week literacy remediation programs during breaks.

Sanket Srivastava, 10, is a Mathias fifth-grader and this year’s champion of the Benton County Spelling Bee. Stopping by the school Friday, he said he likes the school’s schedule.

“It’s better to have more breaks in the middle,” he said.

Gary Ritter, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, said he wasn’t aware of any solid research on the effectiveness of year-round schools. The phenomenon of students regressing over summer vacation is better documented, and year-round schools seem like a logical solution, he said.

Robert Maranto, another professor of education reform at the university, said schools without long summer breaks could be especially beneficial for children from low-income families or families that don’t speak English at home.

Those students tend to regress more over the summer, because they don’t have the same opportunities for learning outside the school as middle-class students from English-speaking families, he said.

“Most kids don’t really need year-round school,” he said. “Some kids do.”

Abernathy said she’s not sure of the future of alternative calendar schools in the district. They are more expensive than other schools, mostly because the district has to pay bus drivers for more of the year, she said.

She said the cost is tolerable, although she did not know exactly how much the year-round schools add to the district’s expenses.

For now, the plan is to keep Mathias and Eastside on alternative calendars indefinitely, she said.

Applying a similar calendar to middle schools and high schools would be difficult because of sports and activity schedules, she said.

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