Oakville School District adopts balanced calendar for next school year, joining Mossyrock, Toledo and Winlock

Aug. 2—Most students across Washington have another four weeks of summer before school starts Sept. 6, but some are getting ready to return to school as early as Aug. 15.

The shortened summer break is part of the balanced calendar, which creates three week-long "intersessions" throughout the year and shortens the next summer break from 11 weeks to eight weeks in an effort to combat summer learning loss.

The Oakville School District is the latest district to adopt the balanced calendar, approving it for the 2023-24 school year earlier this summer after exploring the possibility for several years.

There's a common misconception that the balanced calendar is year-round school, "but that's not really the purpose," Oakville Superintendent Rich Staley said in an interview with a Chronicle reporter last week.

"The purpose is to extend out the school year a little bit and then purposefully put in some breaks throughout the year, because the year gets long on kids," he said.

He added that research shows students — especially those with learning difficulties or who come from poverty — lose much of what they learned the previous school year over a long 11- to 12-week summer break, which makes the beginning of the next school year a struggle for both teachers and students.

"The theory behind it is, if we can shorten that (summer break), then those kids will lose less over the summer and then they'll have better opportunities to hit the ground running a little bit better coming back in the fall," Staley said.

The Oakville School District began exploring the balanced calendar as an option for the district in 2019 after several school board members returned from a national conference with favorable views on the calendar.

In 2021, the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) used its state and federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to launch the Balanced Calendar Initiative, which offers grants to public school districts, educational service districts, state-tribal education compact schools and charter schools considering adoption of the balanced calendar.

Now in its third year, 18 school districts across Washington state have received grants through that initiative, including the Oakville, Mossyrock, Toledo and Winlock school districts.

The Winlock School District formally adopted three years of the balanced calendar in the summer of 2022, starting with the 2022-23 school year and continuing through the 2024-25 school year.

The Oakville School District applied for and received grant funding twice — $75,000 in 2021 and $34,394 in 2022 — to study and potentially implement the balanced calendar.

Overall, Oakville students and staff seemed to like the balanced calendar, Staley said.

"We had the kids vote, and that was pretty exciting to get their perspective and see where they are. They were very strong in supporting the balanced calendar ... the staff was pretty strong on it as well," Staley said.

The community was harder to win over, Staley said. But after a key community meeting earlier this year with the Chehalis Tribe, which has a substantial student population in Oakville schools, the attitude shifted toward a general consensus in favor of the balanced calendar.

"That was kind of the tipping point for the board to be able to say 'This is something we want to do now,'" Staley said.

With the balanced calendar, the first day of school for Oakville students Tuesday, Aug. 15, with three week-long intersession breaks scheduled Oct. 16-20, Feb. 20-23 and May 20-24.

During those intersessions, school staff will host optional enrichment activities for students such as cooking classes, financial math lessons or STEM-related projects.

"Those are truly days off from normal school, if you will," Staley said, adding that those who do attend the intersessions "will be engaged in more hands-on activities or some skills that they might be struggling with."

At the elementary level, those intersessions will be formatted more like a summer school, with three to four days of planned activities and a field trip on the last day.

June 18 will be the last day of school this upcoming year.

Staley has three things he hopes the Oakville School District will get from the shift to the balanced calendar.

"Number one, obviously, is academic performance. We struggle a bit there. Our scores aren't where we want them to be," he said, adding he hopes teachers and parents can encourage certain kids who they know struggle in the classroom to attend the intersessions and get extra support.

Number two, he said, is combating absenteeism. "We have a few more breaks and three-day weekends and whatnot. Hopefully that will make it so that people aren't stressed as much and makes it so that kids will be here," Staley said.

A more relaxed atmosphere at school was one of the selling points of the balanced calendar for Staley as superintendent, he said, adding his third goal for the calendar shift is "just changing the culture a bit and being more about trying to meet the needs of students and the adults a bit differently."