Year Round School Calendar on the Chopping Block (again)

Rumor has it that year round school in Beaufort County has one foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel. What a shame. I know there’s information out there that might suggest year round is too costly, or rather that running two separate calendars is wasteful. But I’m not convinced. And even if it were true, I would equate the minor cost difference (if any) as an investment worth paying. The improved performance at our year round schools justify keeping them intact, especially when area demographics (like a high population of ESOL and Free/Reduced lunch kids) and strong parental support are taken into consideration.

But new leadership likes to keep everything the same, as shown in the ill planned district wide (mandatory) pep rally. It was so important to force every BCSD employee to be at the same place at the same time that traffic jams, capacity issues, and parking tickets were mere inconsequential annoyances, because we’re all in this together. It’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around this outlook of “all the same for everyone” because the district up until this point has never had any consistency whatsoever. It’s not hard to agree with individual clusters conforming to uniformity, but forcing the same rule set found in Hilton Head on working class Bluffton or impoverished areas north, seems close-minded at best.

Schools are linked in that the elementary school prepares for middle school that prepares for high school. But exactly why would a high school teacher care one way or the other about what’s going on at a neighboring elementary school or another high school on the other side of the county? As long as those younger kids are receiving the proper groundwork to prepare them for the step up to high school, it doesn’t and it shouldn’t matter, nor is it within the scope of high school teachers’ control anyway. My point is that while coming together as a district might make people feel good, it has no effect (other than to institute the Gestapo mentality) on individual schools. How are 2 elementary schools 30 miles apart going to pull each other up, simply by instituting the same practices at both schools? It won’t. It can’t.

That’s not to say there aren’t some innovative ideas or resources that could be shared, but chances are, this is already happening anyway. Meanwhile we continue a policy of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Ask any year round teacher if they’d give up a computer if it meant they could retain the year round schedule, suddenly you’d have piles of computers at your doorstep. Yet the district enacted a $3 million dollar computer purchase program (per year at this point) and we might (MIGHT) save some money by unifying the calendar, but that number in and of itself is a major bone of contention.

The latest version of superintendent isn't worried about the money. She’s concerned about unifying the district, even if it costs academic performance. So here we’ll be, sinking in the same boat together. Isn’t that lovely?