Year-Round School Not So Bad, Insiders Say Post Falls Experiment Competes With Outdoor Summer Fun

School’s out for just about all kids in North Idaho.

But while they’re outside playing, Shannon Sullivan and 89 other first- through fourth-graders at Prairie View Elementary School in Post Falls are inside studying fractions and phonics.

“Instead of wasting time watching TV, you’re learning,” Sullivan said as her fourth-grade class took a break from numerators and denominators.

This is the first summer for North Idaho’s only year-round school, where students attend class for about 45 days with 15-day breaks in between sessions. They will begin a five-week break at the end of July.

The Post Falls district approved the year-round pilot program last year to eliminate the three-month interruption of summer vacation. If it is successful, it may be expanded to ease overcrowding at other schools.

“You do away with the long summer vacation and kids are going to remember and retain information better,” Principal Barney Brewton said. “So many kids come back not knowing how to write their name or count past 20.”

But Brewton said it will be several years before the educational impact of the year-round program can be measured.

The schedule fits perfectly for Ellen Murinko, who has a first- and a fourth-grader at the school.

Murinko’s husband works in California, and the year-round calendar allows the family to visit every six weeks.

She said her children didn’t grumble about going to school in the summer.

“Mine were anxious to go back to school,” she said.

With most of the school’s 556 students at home during the summer, teachers said they like the relaxed, quiet atmosphere.

“I was ready for something different,” said first-grade teacher Mary Knight, who has taught in the district for 13 years.

The year-round program costs the district about $10,000 to cover transportation, food service and staff, Assistant Superintendent Jerry Keane said.

A fifth-grade class will be added next year, for a total of about 125 students, Keane said.

“It seems to be working very well,” he said. “It’s certainly something that will fit many of our families’ lives.”

It could be many years, if ever, before the district completely converts to a year-round schedule, he added.

For some parents, though, the traditional calendar works best.

Michelle Gerdes, who has a student at Prairie View, chose not to sign up for the year-round program.

“It would mess up the family, the vacations with the family as a whole,” Gerdes said. “It may not be such a big deal if you have only one child, but if you have several, it is. I like the traditional calendar just because we have such a small amount of summer here.”

There are about 2,800 year-round schools in the country with a total of 1.9 million students, according to the National Association for Year-Round Education.

In Meridian, the program is so popular that students are on a waiting list to get into the four year-round elementary schools.

Janey Reifle can see why.

Reifle, whose son is a fourth-grader in the program, said she lives outside the geographic boundaries but fought to get him into the year-round school.

She said her son will benefit from having fewer kids in the school all year. And the breaks are a good time to catch up on reading and math, she said.

But parents should have a clear reason for signing their kids up for year-round school, she said.

“It has to be academic,” Reifle said. “It’s not so your kids are in school for baby-sitting.”