Three southwest schools to go to year-round schedule

Forbuss, Reedom and Wright elementary schools –– three of the most overcrowded buildings in the Clark County School District –– will go to a 12-month schedule starting in the 2013-14 school year.

Students will be split into five “tracks,” or groups. Four tracks will attend school at the same time while one is on break. Students typically will attend school for nine weeks and then will have three weeks off before returning.

Forbuss principal Shawn Paquette said going to year-round scheduling is “the best decision (the school board) could make” considering the alternatives, such as rezoning, which would have shifted around about 2,500 southwest-area students.

“If you rezone and lose students, you also lose teachers,” he said. “We could have lost quite a few staff members.”

Forbuss was built to hold about 750 students but has more than 1,200. It has 18 portable classrooms, a portable lunchroom and restroom facilities. Paquette said about 400 Forbuss students would have been impacted by the rezoning proposal.

“I’d hate to lose 400 families,” he said. “Losing staff and families wouldn’t have solved the problem. We’re still growing, and we’d have to keep rezoning every year.”

Paquette said support from parents for the new schedule has been mixed. Some parents have indicated they may have to move because of scheduling conflicts, Paquette said.

Other parents, such as Jennifer Diiorio, is happy her child can stay at Forbuss but said she has no idea how her family will manage it. Diiorio, a mother of three, will have students in fourth, sixth and ninth grades.

“I will have three kids in three different schools,” Diiorio said, “two on a nine-month schedule and one on a 12-month schedule, which makes it a little challenging.”

The schools sent informational packets to every parent explaining the changes. Parents also are being asked to submit applications with their top three choices of the five tracks. Parents with students in middle and high schools would be given preference, Paquette said, since track five most closely aligns with the summer break their other children will get.

Diiorio hopes her fourth-grader can get on track five so her family can coordinate vacations and other family activities.

Academically, Paquette and Diiorio agreed that a 12-month schedule is an advantage because students do not have the nearly three-month break during summer to forget what they learned.

Forbuss and nearly 80 other schools were year-round during the 2009-10 school year before the school district ended such schedules.

“They tend to retain more of the information they’re taught,” Diiorio said. “Teachers don’t necessarily have to reteach it when they return.”

Paquette said he did not see any significant changes in students’ test scores that could be attributed to a nine- or 12-month schedule.

One of the reasons the district went away from such schedules is money. Each elementary school is expected to cost about $300,000 more annually to operate because of utilities, transportation and staffing costs.

Diiorio said she will “cross her fingers and hope for the best” but does not know how she will arrange for child care at this point.

Even with all the uncertainty, she still said the most important thing for her was keeping her daughter at Forbuss.

Charles Hauntz, a regular volunteer known as “Grandpa Charlie” around the school, feels the same way. His two grandchildren will be moving to fifth grade next year, and he is happy they can remain Forbuss students.

“They’re a part of the Forbuss community, and they want to stay here,” Hauntz said. “... There was no perfect solution to this problem of overcrowding. The only way you’re going to solve it is to build new schools, and that just isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“Everybody I’ve talked to in favor of year-round school has said it’s the lesser of two evils.”

Contact View education reporter Jeff Mosier at jmosier@viewnews.com or 702-224-5524.