'Something very unique to Brevard': School board considering year-round school

Brevard's school board is talking about expanding students' calendars to year-round school, though no decisions will be made until after the new year.

At the Dec. 12 work session, the discussion came up as they discussed the development of the calendar for the 2024-2025 school year, with Board Chair Megan Wright saying she is a "product" of year-round elementary school within BPS.

"It equates to the same amount of time in school, you're just not taking that huge break during the summer," she said, adding that spreading out that time could be helpful in preventing teacher burnout and the "summer slide," where students struggle to get back into the groove of class work in the fall after time off.

The idea comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law earlier this year establishing a four-year pilot program for year-round school districts. The program begins in 2024-2025 and will study the pros and cons of year-round schooling at selected locations.

What grades would be impacted?

The program laid out by House Bill 891 is only for elementary schools. It will study at least one elementary school per selected district to see the benefits and problems of holding year-round school.

But during the Dec. 12 discussion, both Jennifer Jenkins and Wright agreed that implementing year-round school for only elementary students would be tough on families.

"Doing them completely different from one another is just like a disaster for families, if secondary schools are running on a different calendar than elementary," Jenkins said.

Wright agreed, saying that as a kid, it was hard when her brother was in high school and they had completely different scheduled.

"For it to really succeed, it has to be district-wide," she said.

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Would all schools participate?

While she said keeping all grades on the same schedule was a good idea, Jenkins opposed doing so for all schools, as did Katye Campbell.

"As far as the idea of moving the entire district to a year-round schedule, I'll just be honest, right off the bat, I am not in favor of that," Campbell said. She added that she would be in favor of creating the option for families to either participate in year-round or a traditional school year. "If there's families that say, 'I love that idea, I want to go there,' they can choice in ... we have such a choice-friendly district because of all of our options, they're always going to have a place to go if that schedule does or does not work out."

Jenkins said she would rather wait until the state pilot program had completed its four-year analysis, or at least some time of collecting data, before deciding whether or not to implement something similar in Brevard.

"I don't think it's a bad idea to put it on the table and watch it, but I'd be hesitant to jump ahead of the train," she said.

If the board opts to try it, it's not clear when year-round school would be implemented.

Pros and cons uncertain

A number of issues that could arise with a schedule change were brought up, including the impact on daycares and programs providing after-school activities, the impact on low-income students, changes to BPS' payroll structure, new job descriptions, changes for transportation management, increased cost of running air conditioning over the summer, what sports schedules might look like and the possibility of schedules not aligning with Eastern Florida State College for dual enrolled students, as EFSC follows a traditional school year; the impact on ESE students.

Jenkins was especially concerned with the impact year-round schools could have on low-income families trying to access affordable daycare.

"It's difficult enough to find affordable daycare, and then in order to find affordable daycare that you don't need consistently is even more difficult, so that's going to be a challenge for certain communities as well," she said.

Matt Susin disagreed with this concern, saying he felt year-round school would actually lessen the need for daycares.

"In the event that a parent would like their child to stay, and we funded it the right way and put opportunities in between there for their families to take advantage of some of that stuff, we would actually see accelerated learning done the right way," he said.

Jenkins also raised concerns about taking away opportunities for teachers who work second jobs during the summer break.

"Taking that away from them could very much impact their overall household budget that they can't recover from, and may force them to genuinely leave this profession," she said.

As for pros, year-round school would likely help avoid the summer slide and improve mental health, Susin said. He also believed that allowing teachers shorter breaks spread out over time would help with avoiding burnout.

"If you have those breaks where it's other opportunities for extended times, it works out," he said.

It could also provide more chances for students to spend time with their parents and families, Gene Trent said.

"We all seem to think that parents seem to run on the same schedule as our students," he said. "Their jobs aren't like that either, and they (would have the) opportunity to go visit relatives."

While no decisions were made at the meeting, Wright asked board members to allow her to work with administration to create a year-round calendar and bring it back at a future meeting. If the board approves the calendar, they can begin polling community members about how they feel about the idea of year-round school, she said.

"I know personally how beneficial this is, I know how well this works for families," Wright said. "I think it would be something very unique to Brevard."

Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard's school board discusses year-round school. Here's what we know