During the traditional 10-week summer break, teachers at Jordan Community Elementary School in Rogers Park worry that their pupils will get so caught up in swimming, camping and vegging out in front of the TV that they’ll forget simple math equations and even how to crack open a book.
From past experience, teachers expect that, come fall, they’ll have to spend practically the entire month of September reviewing the basics.
So this year-to counteract the summer rusties-school officials are trying a new tact: homework over the vacation.
Actually, it isn’t real formal; nothing gets graded, and there’s no penalty for not doing it.
Instead, the school next fall will offer rewards-chicken dinners, radios, T-shirts-for reading over the summer 25 books or more and doing simple math lessons, such as measuring out ingredients as their parents cook and counting out toll money on trips.
“We want to keep them (intellectually) active, so their minds won’t be idle,” said Jordan Principal Maurice Harvey.
Teachers at Healy Elementary School, 3010 S. Parnell Ave., have been assigning summer homework for years. Though many pupils do the lessons, teachers still haven’t been able to overcome the back-to-school knowledge gap.
That’s why several Healy teachers-as well as many educators from other Chicago schools-heartily endorse Mayor Richard Daley’s plan to put all 410,000 public school students on a year-round calendar.
Though the idea is wrought with problems and some parents are against it, many educators say the 12-month calendar could help Chicago students raise their lagging achievement test scores, keep them off the streets during the summer, when juvenile crime increases, and even address classroom overcrowding.
“I think it would be wonderful. This would keep their brains working throughout the year,” said Mary Lynch, a 1st-grade teacher at Healy.
Beverly Tunney, Healy principal and president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, added: “I think it’s absolutely ideal; we’re not an agrarian society anymore. Kids don’t mind being in school during the summer. I have a huge summer school that proves that.”
Whether year-round learning makes a substantial difference in achievement is questionable.
The National Association for Year-Round Schools says that two studies conclude that students on a 12-month calendar perform better. But the studies involved only a few schools.
And in fact, only 45 percent of the 2,214 year-round schools around the nation-a number that has jumped from 859 over five years-opted for the 12-month calendar for academic reasons. The majority use it to relieve overcrowding, as an inexpensive alternative to building new schools.
According to the district, more than 155 schools-about one-fourth of the district-are classified as overcrowded or severely-overcrowded. Because the district has been unable to build new schools, many students are forced to attend class in closets and hallways and ride buses across town to underutilized buildings.
Twelve public schools in Chicago have opted for year-round learning during the last five years. Under the system, students are placed on one of four tracks. Overcrowding is diminished because one track of students, or 25 percent of the enrollment, is off at any given time.
“Mayor Daley’s thinking is correct; I do believe year-round is better educationally,” said Edis Snyder, principal of Gale Elementary School, 1631 W. Jonquil Trail, which has been on the 12-month calendar for five years.
“But can it work in every community?” she said. “I don’t know.”
Snyder said the district put a handful of schools on a year-round calendar as early as the 1970s. But the experiment failed, she said, because of conflict between the schools and the board, and the schools went back to a traditional calendar.
The 12-month calendar increased Gale’s capacity for a while, Snyder said. But now that enrollment is around 1,040, school officials have decided to run the year-round school on a mind-boggling “dual shift” schedule. Besides the four morning tracks, the school is adding three afternoon tracks to accommodate the enrollment.
“The fact is we don’t have space, so we have to be flexible,” she said.
Some parents, who likely could be a formidable obstacle, cite the drawbacks: Year-round would probably cost the cash-strapped district more than $5 million to pay for extra staff and to keep buildings open all year and probably millions more to equip all the schools with air-conditioning.
And it would wreck family schedules and vacation time.
The 60 days on, 20 days off schedule would create the complication of finding intermittent child care during the summer, instead of for a single block of time, said Kathy Kuranda, a local school council member at Shields Elementary Schooland Kelly High Schools.
“With no other alternative, you’d find a lot of them leaving their kids at home alone,” she said.
James Deanes, an LSC member at Louis Armstrong Elementary School, said, “This infringes on the rights of local school councils tremendously. The scheduling of classes should be a local school decision.”
