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Show Extended year merits support The Alpine School District Board of Education is considering testing the waters for an extended school year. The proposed site for this experiment is Orem's Orchard Elementary, and the plan under consideration is unlike similar year-round school proposals. Under the Orchard Elementary plan, school will run for 11 months, with the entire school taking a vacation during the month of July. Students will then be offered their choice of five rotating tracks, which will provide other vacation periods during different seasons, depending on the track. Board members are bound to get some questions and comments about the extended-year program when they meet at Geneva Elementary on Feb. 26 for the monthly public information meeting. They will vote on the proposal at their March 12 business meeting in American Fork. That vote should be one of support for a trial of the extended-year program. Year-round schools and extended year programs offer the only feasible alternative to school districts like the Alpine District, where growth is continuing at a rapid rate. It no longer makes sense to keep building schools given today's construction costs, and then to let those buildings sit empty for a fourth of the year. This is one of the problems an extended-year program will solve. Under the proposal, for example, Orchard Elementary Elemen-tary will be able to handle 25 percent more students during a given school year. And it will be able to do that with fewer teachers and a better ratio of students per teacher. Shorter vacation periods help students retain more information when they return to the classroom, cutting down on review time before new material can be covered. And extending the school year turns teaching into a full-time job, rather than one with three full months of unemployment each year. It increases the annual income in-come of a teacher, and provides a needed incentive for good teachers to stay in the classroom. There are some drawbacks. The extended year breaks up the traditional pattern of nine months in the classroom, and three months out - that may be inconvenient in-convenient for some families. Lining up the children in the five tracks also presents a tremendous scheduling challenge for school administrators, ad-ministrators, but one they feel they can handle. To do that effectively, officials will have to be sensitive to neighborhoods as well as families, since the rhythm of a neighborhood is closely tied to the school's schedule. But most of those drawbacks are inconveniences. And they can be dealt with. The problems solved by an extended ex-tended year approach involve economics, and face the reality that the Alpine District cannot continue to spend less per child than most districts in the state and still keep pace. The needs of schools created by a growing number of students must be faced economically and efficiently. The extended year program does that while giving up nothing in the way of educational excellence. The pilot program for the extended school year program at the Orchard Elementary should be approved ap-proved by the Alpine Board of Education and implemented im-plemented this coming school year. If the pilot program is successful - and indications are it will be - the district should consider adopting the pr ogra m throughout the district . |