What is a Year-Round School?
WCPSS operates its year-round schools as multi-track, year-round schools. This means that the students in the school are organized into four groups or “tracks”. Each track follows a different schedule. The schedules are staggered so that at any given time, three of the tracks are in school and one track is out on break. This system is a “45/15 Schedule”, meaning the pupils are in school for 45 days, then off for 15, through the year.
The school year in a Year-Round school begins in early July for students on tracks 1, 2 and 3. Students on track 4 begin the school year 15 days later– when track 3 tracks out. Year-round pupils have the same holidays as those on the traditional calendar, and all WCPSS pupils are in school for 180 days.
Families can use track-out time for vacation, or track-out can be used for additional learning. Elementary schools offer intersession programs during track-out for pupils who are behind and need to catch up in their studies. Child care providers in our community offer child care during track-out.
By operating schools on a multi-track system, schools are able to accommodate up to 33 percent more pupils in a building. For every three schools on a multi-track, year-round calendar, one less school has to be built and equipped. Another advantage of the year-round schedule is lessening the amount of learning loss that occurs after a long summer break, and avoiding teacher and student burnout.
Some of the challenges include scheduling of maintenance and repairs, making daycare arrangements for track-out periods, interference with some summer activities, the possibility of siblings being on different tracks or calendars, inclement weather make-up days on Saturdays, and the fact that some of the savings in cost will be offset by other expenses.
Calendars for year-round schools are found at www.wcpss.net/Calendars/.