A Councilman’s Proposal–

Can Year-Round High School Temporarily Solve The Space Crunch?

By John Voket

More than two months ago, during the final finance subcommittee budget deliberation, Legislative Council member Joseph DiCandido suggested the Newtown school district explore instituting a year-round high school schedule as both a strategic and interim means of reducing space constraints at the Glenn Road campus.

This week, the Board of Education directed departing Superintendent Evan Pitkoff to research whether or not the suggestion is viable.

Both the school board and Mr DiCandido acknowledge the idea would involve fundamental and sweeping changes in the way the district conducts its current business of educating thousands of Newtown students, and that such a move would likely require “start-up costs” in the millions.

But the councilman believes that the plan could effectively address concerns tied to the school’s accreditation warning status while the town and district officials struggle with the financing and eventual roll-out of a building expansion project.

Authorization for the first phase of proposed financing — $2.75 million to underwrite engineering and architectural designs — is going to taxpayers in a referendum June 26 (see related story).

At a school board meeting June 12, Dr Pitkoff reiterated information he first related to Mr DiCandido and the finance subcommittee on April 4. The superintendent said an initial investigation showed that many districts have tried all-year schooling but later discontinued the program.

Dr Pitkoff added that there were no data to support it leading to student improvement.

The National Association for Year-Round Education (nayre.org), however, provides numerous studies showing increasing the amount of time students spend in school, especially at the high school level, legitimately enhances academic performance.

While Mr DiCandido does not envision a year-round high school as a permanent scheduling measure, he said it can serve as an interim solution that could move the district more expediently toward addressing the most evident concern of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), which placed Newtown High School’s accreditation on warning status last year.

Since first suggesting the year-round idea in April, Mr DiCandido said it seemed the superintendent was unwilling to explore the idea further.

“I think the idea has worthiness, if for nothing more than to free up space,” Mr DiCandido said. “I think it could address the problem of what to do in the interim three years or more before a building expansion is completed.

“And who knows, if we are looking at a population bubble, it could move us past that and save us tens of millions by postponing the building expansion,” he said.

Measured against the projected $41 million estimated to renovate and expand the high school to accommodate several more hundred students, Mr DiCandido sees a gradually diminishing cost to implement and support the year-round program. He suggested it could cost as much as $5 million the first year, but believes further implementation and administrative costs in subsequent years would rapidly diminish and possibly zero out eventually.

“If we spend even $10 million over five years to run this program, and it saves us the cost of expanding the building, it would be well worth the temporary discomfort to accommodate the adjustment,” Mr DiCandido said.

The councilman pointed out that the costs tied to a facility expansion go well beyond the $41 million proposed for bricks, mortar, infrastructure, and classroom finishing.

“You are looking at the cost to staff the expansion; the cost to heat and cool the extra space; to clean and maintain it; and especially the cost of teachers and benefits to staff it,” Mr DiCandido said.

“On the other hand, going to a year-round program, you already have custodial staff, administrators , the nurse, and some faculty working 12 months a year,” he said. “Any of our regular teachers who want to make more money might be able to get compensated on a per diem basis for the extra time.

“I see it as possibly producing some savings. It’s definitely better utilization of school personnel,” Mr DiCandido added.

According to NAYRE Executive Director Emeritus Dr Charles Ballinger, educational research is very clear that there is summer learning loss because of the long summer vacation of the traditional calendar. That finding is rather consistent across many studies.

The largest, and most widely accepted, study in this field of study was done by a team in the psychology department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, headed by Dr Harris Cooper, Dr Bellinger writes on the organization’s website.

“In laymen’s language,” he continues, “the study found that summer learning loss is a reality, that all students, including the best, lose in math and spelling skills, and many, though not all, lose in reading skills over the traditional summer. Based on the research about summer learning loss, it is difficult — no, it is impossible for an educator to defend a calendar which allows so much loss, for any reason other than as a choice for those parents who prioritize lifestyle (ten weeks of vacation) over learning (less learning loss).”