Year-Round School Is Making The Grade

Beneath papier-mache trees and surrounded by walls kissed with the creations of young minds, families are discovering a new way for children to learn in the Spokane Valley.

Enrollment in the East Valley School District’s Continuous Curriculum School, the only year-round public K-8 voluntary program in the Valley, is booming.

Parents gush about shorter breaks. Kids work and play together in multi-age classrooms. And, administrators are declaring the success of a key component in the movement to provide families all kinds of ways to learn.

“This school lives and dies on whether it is accepted,” said CCS principal Scott Read. “We are growing at an unprecedented rate. Our parents want strong schools. This school meets their needs.”

There’s no debating that fact, said CCS parent Denise Kolva, who home schooled her children until discovering East Valley’s program last year.

“Education was very, very important to us,” Kolva said. “Here, the kids do really well. They work at the level they need too. Plus, I can be here all of the time.

“It gives us exactly what we want.”

The young program, housed in the east wing of Skyview Elementary, began as an experiment in 1997.

District officials fishing for ideas to better serve students discovered that a core group of parents was sincerely interested in the year-round format.

About 100 students enrolled the first two years. This year, enrollment nearly doubled.

There are waiting lists for every class in third through eighth grade. A multi-age class of kindergartners, first and second graders meets on the lawn this summer while space in the building is reconfigured.

“Parents must like what they see here,” Read said with a smile.

The idea behind year-round school is simple - shorter school breaks means less time reteaching skills.

The sessions are six weeks long with two-week breaks and a six-week summer vacation built in.

Multi-age classes encourage students to progress at their own pace. And, the short breaks include a week of intersession enrichment and recreational programs as well as remedial programs for kids having a tough time in class.

“You don’t have to wait until summer to help a kid catch up,” Read said. “They are much more likely to succeed that way.”

Year-round classrooms are seeing a resurgence nationally. More than 2 million American kids attend year-round school and the numbers climb each year, according to statistics from the National Association for Year-Round Education. That number is four times that of children attending such schools a decade ago.

CCS and other alternative programs, East Valley administrators say, are designed to make public education more responsive to individual needs of families and children.

But that doesn’t mean the year-round format works for everyone.

Many of the families that show up at the door of CCS include home schoolers and those who have decided not to place their children in a neighborhood school.

After moving from the year-round school system in San Diego, Carrie Wilkinson really wanted her children to return to such a setting.

“Middle school is such a tough time,” she said. “With multi-age classes and the different format, there’s less competition.

“We really had no problems with the other schools,” she continued. “All CCS was is an option. That’s what public schools need, options.”

Traditional classrooms are still the most popular and, while a high school program is being considered, there is no movement at this point to convert more East Valley schools to the year-around calendar.

CCS is a success, in the end, because parents are required to give 48 hours a year to the program, Read said.

“This school is the children’s and the parent’s,” Read said. “I’m just here to make sure that everything moves along.”