Across the country, some schools are beginning to adopt a year-round schedule. As of now, around 3,700 schools throughout the U.S. have embraced a year-long school schedule. However, Berkeley High School should not be one of the schools considering the switch, as it would negatively impact students and teachers alike.
Firstly, year-round school would not be beneficial for students’ transition from one grade to another. A short break would not be as rewarding a way to finish the year. With a traditional school schedule, students have time to decompress and get ready for the next school year. “It allows people to have a bigger break over the summer to be able to transition, and not be more stressed out about quickly jumping into the next school year,” Nalani Rapoza, a BHS freshman, said. Without summer, there would not be enough time to mentally prepare for the next year and changes that might arrive. “I think it benefits students to get a little bit of a brain break, and the teachers to regroup and plan a little bit better for the school year,” said Hasmig Minassian, a BHS ethnic studies and social living teacher.
Furthermore, changing to a year-long schedule would interrupt the classroom environment. “I think it would break up some of the relationship-building with students because relationships grow over time. If you have a long break in between, you have to catch back up,” Minassian explained. The mini breaks throughout the year might interfere with teachers' units and curriculum. “I feel like everybody would forget everything over the mini-break,” said Elizabeth Buchanan, a special education teacher at BHS.
A benefit to having summer breaks is also getting to see family and go on longer trips. “A lot of my family lives pretty far away, so the summer offers time for us to travel and visit them, which we don't get to do very often,” freshman Hazel Levi-Lang stated. Maximizing time spent with family could be hard when just having short breaks. Family time is valuable and limiting it would undermine family closeness and relationships.
Summer break also provides students with time to learn and enhance their social skills. “Over the summer, students who are doing enriching things like traveling, taking classes, reading books, or doing their extracurriculars, for those students, I think summer break is beneficial,” Minassian said. The ability to take part in camps or activities that are not usually available at school makes for a fun and unique opportunity. In addition, students who socialize and attend summer camps or other recreational activities often experience improved physical and mental health. A year-round school would not give students a chance to engage in these experiences.
Additionally, organizing and planning extracurricular activities would be challenging with a year long schedule. With less time for extracurriculars, students would have to fit certain summer activities into their schedules. “It would be really difficult to schedule extracurricular activities like sports and band if this were a year-round school,” Buchanan stated. Practices for student activities would be constantly interrupted by the short breaks which could interfere with their performance.
Altogether, a year-long school schedule would be hard to adapt to, as well as interrupt how classes operate. Summer break is a time to look forward to, and helps motivate students to finish off the year. Our current school system took much thought and precision, and we must conserve it for future generations of students.