Year-round school

I just posted a quick link to an AP article with a late stab at the AP. However, I suggested that the article would make a great opening day tie-in for a lot of subjects. Here in the States, opening day is a a solid summer-of-fun away.

Then I realized that many folks are still in school. For some of you, it's because you're in another hemisphere. For others, however, your schools have moved to a year-round model. I have a fairly frequent debate with my wife on the topic of year-round school. As a teacher who spends way too much time reviewing, spinning kids back up, and killing time at the end of the year when kids are just waiting for vacation, I'm a big fan of the year-round idea.

As a parent, my wife thinks kids need a break. She's a mom, after all. The breaks are nice (I like them, too, as do most of us teachers). However, the retention and lost time issues are really significant.

From a tech perspective, though, we get a lot of work done when teachers, students, and staff aren't in the buildings. Certainly, maintenance work can be done at night, on weekends, and during the breaks built in to most year-round schedules. But is it enough for smaller operations with limited staff (or large operations that use the summers to undertake really large tech refresh and IT rollouts)?

I'm torn, as I look at my to do list for the summer. I'm not sure how I'm going to get everything done in the next 8 weeks, let alone be able to do it on a more compressed (if more frequent) break schedule.

What do you think?

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