current school calendar works best for students

Additional breaks all year - it’s every student’s dream, and Holt students are living it right now. With the Holt school district, other than Elliott and Wilcox Elementary, currently operating on a hybrid calendar, many students are happy with how it is playing out. The traditional school calendar, which Holt used to operate on, most notably had a longer summer and fewer breaks during the year, while the current hybrid calendar has more breaks during the year and a shorter summer.

Superintendent David Hornak is the Executive Director of the National Association for YearRound Education (NAYRE) which “is committed to educational excellence through school calendar reform.” Hornak’s leadership and expertise in both Holt and NAYRE inspired the current hybrid calendar.

The most obvious reason for switching to the hybrid calendar is to avoid the dreaded “summer slide" where students forget what they learned in the previous school year.

According to Sage Journal's research, in a review of the 13 most recent studies, they found that summer loss equals about one month of learning. Many students can attest to this, as the first few months back at school are spent trying to remember how to learn again. This is a considerable amount of wasted educational time that can be minimized with the hybrid calendar, as the summer break is about one month shorter than the traditional summer break.

In addition to avoiding summer learning loss, the breaks given through the hybrid calendar are much needed to prioritize mental health. For high school students especially, school provides a constant stream of stress that inevitably takes a toll on mental health. For some, it results in burnout, a lack of motivation, lower grades, and more absences. These breaks are essential for students to catch up on homework, sleep, and overall, to take necessary time to recharge.

On top of the mental health benefits, year round schooling has also proven to reduce dropout rates. It should be noted, however, that this finding does not apply to the hybrid calendar we are currently operating on, but to a completely year round schedule. According to Jessica Washington of Politic365, the national dropout rate is five percent, while the dropout rate for year-round school students is just two percent. This three percent difference leads experts to conclude that a balanced calendar could be the solution to keeping students in high school.

Not only could it be a solution as a whole, but, especially here at Holt High School, given multiple studies suggesting that a year-round calendar is most beneficial for low income students. According to an article from Education Next, researchers found that the academic achievement gap between students in high and low poverty Baltimore schools grew over three times as much between kindergarten and eighth grade with most of these gaps increasing over the summer. In this study, schools were deemed high poverty if more than 40 percent of students received

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a meal subsidy or free lunch. These results speak for themselves, but especially apply to Holt high school as in 2021-2022 the government of Michigan reported that 41.78 percent of Holt High School students were eligible for free or reduced lunch. Thus, our school would be considered high poverty in this study and would greatly benefit from a shorter summer.

An explanation for this large increase in the learning gap between high and low poverty schools may be attributed to the resources available, or the lack thereof. For high poverty schools, many students do not have the money to pay for a tutor over the summer. Additionally, these students may not have a ride to the local library or have access to the technology needed to continue their education outside of class.

Lastly, since the hybrid calendar has more breaks throughout the year, it offers families and students more chances to travel. The breaks spread out through the year allow busy families to have multiple chances to go on trips besides only spring or winter break.

Minimizing the effects of the summer slide, prioritizing mental health, reducing dropout rates, maximizing available resources for students, and providing more flexibility for busy families are all reasons many students prefer the hybrid schedule over the traditional one.

While the hybrid setup has been generally well received, it will be interesting to see if the expected long term benefits play out.

Speak Up

Do you prefer the current hybrid calendar or the traditional calendar?

“I like hybrid more because I have harder classes, and breaks give me a good mental health break instead of school being so draining.”

Junior Oliviia Quiroga

“I like the traditional calendar because I like longer summers so I can tan and swim.”

Junior Shae Schwem

“I really like hybrid because the breaks throughout the year are more beneficial to me and it gives more oppportunities to travel throughout the year.”

Senior Paige Lemmon

“Traditional calendar because longer summers are cool because they are long.”

Freshman Zander Horton

“I want longer summers because I miss having three months to not stress about homework.”

Senior Savanna Whitaker

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Secure-in-Place immediately. Run.

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Fight.

These were the terrifying words sent out in a mass email received by the 50,000 students enrolled in Michigan State University after the first shots of the school shooting were fired at Berkey Hall. Another round of shots was fired at the Union building at 8:26 P.M.

It wasn’t until 11:49 P.M. that officers finally found the shooter, McRae, on Lake Lansing Road where he shot and killed himself. In these terrifying hours, three lives were lost, Brian Fraser, Alexandria Verner, and Arielle Anderson. Five other students were left in critical condition.

School shootings have been a rising concern in the United States over the past few years. There have been 153 school shootings since 2018.

According to CNN News, this issue seems to be unique to America as it is the country with 57 times as many school shootings as all other major industrialized nations combined.