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Balanced Calendar Works Well for Chase & Gaines Elementary Schools
By Nancy Omdahl
August 2004

“I think Chase Street Elementary is the best kept secret in Clarke County,” says Chase Street music teacher Lori Ragsdale. “It’s a fabulous small school. It used to be the place not to send your kids to, and now there are some wonderful things happening here.”

Ragsdale is not alone in thinking Chase Street and its sister school in Clarke County School District’s balanced calendar program, Gaines School, have become diamonds in the rough. The calendar, along with intersession enrichment activities created by the University of Georgia’s Department of Leisure and Recreation Studies and Athens-Clarke County’s Department of Leisure Services, have raised test scores in language arts, reading, and math.

"The calendar just makes sense to me,” says Janet Martin, counselor at Gaines School. “I enjoy those breaks throughout the year.”

The only drawback for many teachers and parents at the two schools is that the rest of the district is still on a traditional calendar.

The balanced calendar starts August 2 this year. Gaines and Chase will have two weeks off at the end of October, the same three-day holiday for Thanksgiving, roughly the same two-week break for the holidays in December, an additional week off at spring break, and a week off in May before concluding on June 10. For the first two years of the program, Chase and Gaines also had an additional 15 days of school, but due to the district’s budget cuts, this year will only have 180 days. "The calendar this year is the best of both worlds,” says Ragsdale. “The district can afford it, and we have the built-in breaks.”

The only drawback for many teachers and parents at the two schools is that the rest of the district is still on a traditional calendar.

“ I think the district forgets about us sometimes,” says Phyllis Stewart, principal of Gaines School. “They sometimes plan teacher training around the traditional calendar that falls when we’re in school. The training is critical, so there have been a couple times I’ve had to let my teachers go and have substitutes.”

Ragsdale, whose children attend Whitehead Elementary, agrees. “I’ve had a college student and a neighbor help with childcare when my kids are out and I’m still teaching. But on the other hand, when I have a longer break than my kids, I can sometimes do things at their school.”

Mike Wooten, public relations director for Clarke County Schools, agrees that the only problem with the balanced calendar appears to be that there are two calendars operating in the district now. “Most people would prefer that there only be one. But most parents and teachers at Chase and Gaines are now sold on the balanced calendar.”

The idea of shorter summer breaks and longer breaks throughout the year is catching on nationally. It was recommended by UGA education faculty working with Clarke County Schools because research has shown it is a cost-effective way to help children from low-income homes retain information and get back into the routine of school.

“ Research in school reform showed that how you use time most effectively in schools is very important to these children,” says Dr. Jenny Oliver from UGA’s College of Education. “A balanced calendar moves away from the agrarian one to a more year-round one. Research shows that it supports academic achievement for low-achieving students as well as gifted students. Our proposal was to balance the calendar and extend it, ideally for 20 days, but we ended up with 15.”

Oliver says teachers at the schools were seeing enough academic achievement in children to recommend the calendar for the next year, even though they’d lose the extra 15 days. “Everyone I have spoken to about it loved the calendar and liked the breaks throughout the year,” Oliver says.

Martin is most impressed with the improvement in children’s writing abilities. “I go into a classroom to do mental health lessons with some writing and reading aloud, and I can see an improvement. It’s most dramatic in their ability to write. Quite a few kindergarteners are writing sentences, when before several were struggling with their names.”

It’s difficult to say that the academic achievement has been brought about solely by an extended and balanced calendar, though. UGA and ACC Leisure Services have planned enrichment “academic camps” during the two-week breaks throughout the year, exposing students to more art, music, science and physical recreation opportunities than they would have otherwise had. Teachers at the schools have also had the opportunity for additional training.

“ In most schools in the U.S. those breaks are used for remedial work,” Oliver says. “Because both schools tended to have low-income families, we believed that it would be an added burden for them to have to pick up childcare. So we offered an option of low-cost, safe, secure activities that were enriching, not remedial.”

The camps also provided UGA education and leisure and recreation students with invaluable experience planning and conducting activities. “The relationship among the schools, UGA and ACC Leisure Services is a model of what we hoped for,” she says.

Examples of intersession activities include field trips to the Georgia Museum of Art, swimming at the Ramsey Center, and science learning at Sandy Creek Nature Center. When the week-long break in May happened to fall right during UGA’s final exams, an art education professor planned his curriculum so that his students’ final would be planning and conducting an art education curriculum for the Chase and Gaines students.

“ Many UGA students have said, ‘When in our education at UGA would we have had the opportunity for this kind of hands-on experience?’” Oliver says.

The short summer is especially helpful to many children from low-income families. “For many of these kids, they don’t have opportunities to go to camps that middle-income kids do,” Martin says. “The summer gets to be kind of boring. School becomes a place to see their friends. School becomes a good place to be.”

The district’s calendar committee for 2005-06 and 2006-07 has been asked to examine the possibility of implementing a balanced calendar throughout the district, Wooten says. “We wouldn’t move to implement that without a lot of community and parental input, especially within a year. But it’s also important to put the idea out there and talk about it.”

Many parents have already expressed concern about childcare during the intersession breaks resulting from a district-wide balanced calendar. Although UGA and ACC Leisure Services could continue to plan and conduct intersession activities, assuming they could shoulder the burden for all 12,000 district children is unrealistic. Summer childcare and camp providers, such as the YMCA, YWCO, and ACC Leisure Services, could shift more camps to the breaks as well, but many are staffed by college students who are still in school during the breaks.

Still, other schools and other parents across the nation are making a balanced calendar work. Lori Ragsdale of Chase says she was originally apprehensive about the change to a balanced calendar. After serving on the calendar committee and learning about how low-income children are especially helped by it, she stated, “I became convinced we were doing this because it met our students' needs, not just because it was new and different.”

“ My students are not just retaining more academic information – they get into the academic routine each fall more easily. And at every break, we feel like we need to recharge. I really think if other parents investigated and learned about a balanced calendar, they would warm up to it. I think they’re fighting something they don’t know a lot about.”

 

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