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Show Time has come for year-round school Year-round school is an idea whose time has come for the Alpine School District. According to a report by a special task force on student housing needs and alternatives to housing, area schools are running out of room much faster than they can be replaced. Several schools are already out of room - Forbes, Greenwood, Highland, Alpine and Shelley elementaries all have students meeting in portable housing units. So does American Fork Junior High. In fact, the district is using 128 of these portable class rooms to house students it doesn't have room for in the existing school buildings. ' And the task force reports that other schools will be beyond capacity in upcoming years. Pleasant Grove High School will have housing problems next year. American Fork Junior High School, even with the 12 portable classes, will be intolerable in-tolerable the year after that. Pleasant Grove Junior High faces problems in 1986 and by 1987 American Fork High, Lehi Junior High, Lehi High School and all of the Orem High Schools will have reached their capacity and more. . And projected growth patterns for the area indicate that things will get worse before they get better. Building enough schools to meet those needs would cost many millions of dollars that taxpayers in the AlDine District cannot afford. But adopting a year-round school schedule would help reduce or eliminate current over-crowding problems, as well as pave the way for future programs that will make it possible to continue to provide public education for all the children in the Alpine School District. . , , u , , Such a program is not without it's drawbacks. It ' would cost money, initially, as air conditioning would have to be installed so students could attend school in . the summer. And scheduling would be more difficult. But the biggest problems involved in year-round schols is one of attitudes. Families would have to be more flexible with vacation plans, and community education programs would have to take a back seat to ongoing school programs. The advantages to year-round school, however, more than offset those disadvantages. Consider the following facts: -Year-round school will increase building capacity . from 30 to 50 percent, while putting to good use buildings that are left vacant a good part of the year. -Year-round schools have been shown to save schools money in per-pupil costs - it's cheaper. -Year-round school gives school administrators and teachers a chance to work throughout the year - and in turn to be paid as full-time professionals, rather than . as individuals who are automatically laid off three , months out of every year. The full-time option would depend on the individual teacher, but the teacher who opts to work 48 weeks a year could receive about 25 percent more pay each year. And higher salaries will mean better, more qualified teachers. -Shorter vacations mean less time between classes, and less time to forget what a student has learned. That means a better education. Year-round school won't solve all of the housing problems facing the Alpine School District. There are too many and they are very complex. But it is a step in a positive direction that will make better use of existing buildings while saving the taxpayer tax-payer money. It's a step Alpine School District officials should seriously consider, and one district patrons should prepare themselves to accept and support. |