Year-Round Fact Sheet

WCPSS operates 46 year-round schools: 38 elementary and 8 middle schools.

Multi-track, year-round

Students attend 180 days on each track
Students stay with the same teacher the entire school year
The year is divided into four quarters with 45 days of instruction followed by 15-day breaks.
Students and their teachers attend one of four tracks, each with its own 45/15 calendar.
At any given time, three tracks of students and their teachers are in school and one track is on vacation
Each time students and their teachers return from a break, they move to another classroom
Teachers have the same number of planning days on year-round as traditional calendar
Students and teachers have the same holidays on year-round as traditional calendar

Benefits of Year-round calendar

Multi-track schools can accommodate 20-33% more students in a building
Saves on construction costs by better utilizing available space
Saves on operating costs (for example, 6 classes of students can share 5 sets of textbooks, equipment, furniture)
The 15-day breaks provide a time for enrichment and remedial opportunities for students.
For every three schools on a multi-track year-round calendar, that's one school you don't have to build

How year-round saves space

For example, in 2005-06:

Three year-round elementary schools - Durant Road, Wilburn and West Lake - served 3,339 students
Four similar-sized traditional calendar elementary schools - Creech Road, Davis Drive, Green Hope and Reedy Creek - served 3,399 students.

For a standard WCPSS elementary school, plus 5 trailers:·		For a large elementary school design described in WCPSS capital planning assumptions:
23 avg. students per section		23 avg. students per section
School can handle 5 sections of students at each grade	K-5 = 690	School can handle 6 sections of students at each grade	K-5 = 828
With year-round, school can handle 6 sections of students	K-5 = 828	With year-round, school can handle 8 sections of students	K-5 = 1104
828 - 690 = 138 extra students		1104 - 828 = 276 extra students
20% space saving		33% space saving

History of WCPSS Year-round schools

1987-88	WCPSS first investigates year-round schools
1989-90	WCPSS opens nation's first magnet year-round school with 267 students
1991-92	WCPSS opens nation's first multi-track magnet year-round school Morrisville ES with 750 students
1992-93	WCPSS adds four more year-round schools: 3 elementary and 1 middle. The schools are West Lake ES, Durant Road ES, Wilburn ES and West Lake MS. There are now 3,142 students in year-round.
1999-2000	Over next seven years, WCPSS adds seven more year-round schools: five elementary and two middle. These schools include Oak Grove ES, Green ES, Jones Dairy ES, Timber Drive ES, Adams ES, Durant Road MS and Lufkin Road MS. In 1999-2000, there are 10,929 students in year-round
2001-02	WCPSS Growth and Planning assisgns English-as-a-Second-Language programs and base nodes to multi-track, year-round schools.
2003-04	WCPSS adds two more year-round schools: one elementary and one middle. These schools are Heritage ES and Heritage MS
2004-05	WCPSS adds two more year-round school: Jones Dairy ES and Turner Creek ES. In 2005-06, there are 14,564 students in year-round.
2006-07	WCPSS adds five year-round schools: Barwell Road ES, Brier Creek ES, Carpenter ES, Holly Grove ES and River Bend ES. In 2006-07, there are more than 17,000 students in year-round
2007-08	As school enrollment soars, WCPSS adds 26 more year-round schools, four are new schools and 22 schools are transitioned to the year-round calendar. This increases the number of year-round schools to a total of 46 including 38 elementary and 8 middle schools.