Advantages And Disadvantages Of Year Round School

Year round school has been a frequent topic of discussion. There are many controversial opinions on the disadvantages and benefits of implementing this system into school districts.

Although it seems to be a newly developed system, it is not. After the COVID-19 pandemic many were concerned about students being behind intellectually with their studies. Therefore year round school has been a revisited topic that had already been implemented into many schools in the past for a variety of reasons. One source says that schools have been implementing year-round calendars for the past fifty years. Some school districts resorted to year-round calendars due to economic reasons. Other schools turned to year-round school to handle increased enrollment.

This affects scheduling and possibly your typical sports that are played during specific seasons. Students at year round schools would have to sacrifice some of their break for sports and extracurriculars or the school would have to plan accordingly. Typically highschool athletes practice during school hours or after school, but scheduling for these events would have to be extremely thought out to accommodate a year-round school schedule. This could possibly lead to shorter sports seasons if opposing teams cannot work with the school and coaches. Students at a year-round school may not have the availability to experience summer camps or even summer jobs (McGuire,

Some mention the inability to work summer jobs if you attend a school with a year-round calendar. This schedule would make it difficult for teenagers to apply or be considered for jobs, due to inconsistent availability. Some businesses rely on more teen workers during the summers. An article shares news about an Ohio amusement park who disagreed greatly with year-round school. The article states, “We were skeptical that summer camps and amusement parks could exert much influence on education policy—until 2011, when an Ohio state legislator contacted one of us to say that Cedar Point, a massive amusement park outside Cleveland that is often called the “roller coaster capital of the world,” was lobbying for a bill to effectively outlaw year-round calendars by requiring all Ohio public schools to start after Labor Day. The bill did not come to pass, but similar laws restricting school start and end dates have passed in 16 other states” (Graves & von Hippel,