Cleveland Elementary School is preparing to make the switch to what is known as “year-round schooling,” and we’re excited about the promise it holds.

First things first, though. Let’s define what is meant by year-round schooling.

The term can be a bit misleading. It suggests taking the traditional school calendar and adding days.

That’s not the case. The number of days in the school year is fixed by state law.

So we are not adding extra days to the school year. What we are doing is adjusting the school calendar to address a problem known as “summertime slide.”

All teachers are familiar with this phenomenon.  We watch students make steady improvement in grade-level achievement throughout the school year, only to backslide appreciably during the 11 or 12 weeks of a traditional summer break.

In an effort to minimize this slide, we are shaking up the calendar.

When the current school year ends on June 12, Cleveland will take a month-long break with school resuming on July 14. For the remainder of July and August, school will be in session four days a week, Mondays through Thursdays with three-day weekends. This shortened break will allow the staff to immediately pick up where they left off with their students.

Other Port Huron schools will begin the new school year after Labor Day. At Cleveland, we’ll be taking a two-week break for Labor Day, giving our staff a chance to prepare their own children for the start of school.

We’ll resume classes in September with a normal five-day school week.

At Thanksgiving, Cleveland will be off for a full week instead of four days. Our holiday break will be for three weeks instead of two. And our spring break will be for three weeks rather than one.

Summertime slide is a problem for all schools, but it is particularly worrisome for schools with large numbers of at-risk children. At Cleveland, 98 percent of our 278 students are eligible for free or reduced lunches, putting them in the at-risk category.

Taken as a group, at-risk students trail their middle-class peers in achievement scores before they even step foot in kindergarten.  The staff at Cleveland can narrow the gap and make a difference, but we must be able to bridge the learning gap between home and school. Coupling both factors together, teachers narrowing the gap and increasing the value of learning at home, will help our kids move mountains.

We have done our due diligence. Croswell-Lexington already offers year-round schooling, and Superintendent Kevin Miller has been of great help to us. In fact, we are adopting the Cros-Lex calendar with a few tweaks.

When we surveyed families, an overwhelming majority of parents said they would support the experiment as long as the staff remained. If the change were to cause teachers to leave, they would prefer the traditional calendar.  Our Cleveland families support the efforts of the staff and would like this opportunity for their children.

Here at Cleveland, we have total buy-in from the staff. All of us are excited and eager to get started. We think this is going to work, that it is going to help our students academically.

And in the end, that is what matters most.  Cleveland Expects Success…Nothing Less!