Families with students attending Township High School District 214 and its feeder elementary school districts will soon be surveyed on their opinions of moving to a year-round school calendar by the start of the 2017-18 school year.
“Not a lot of the students in our district need to work on the farm in the summer,” said David Schuler, superintendent of Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214, referring to the traditional agrarian calendar, which begins in mid-to-late August and concludes in early June, with roughly three months of summer vacation.
“I’m not saying we need a year-round calendar, but why not engage the community in a community-wide conversation?” Schuler said.
Schuler floated the idea at a Sept. 15 special joint workshop meeting that included administrators and members of the boards of education of District 214 and feeder elementary Districts 15, 21, 23, 25, 26, 57 and 59, as well as representatives from the Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization and Harper College.
In addition to the year-round school concept, Schuler said officials will be considering a so-called “collegiate-style calendar,” where school would start in early August, allowing final exams to be completed before winter break.
In addition to holding several community listening sessions on the proposals, Schuler said District 214 plans to start gathering feedback from parents, students and district staff via an online survey which will be launched in October.
District 214 board of education member Dan Petro said it’s important to get as much feedback as possible from the community before officials can consider making any decisions about changing the current school calendar.
“This would be a significant change from how things have always been done,” Petro said. “Any change is difficult, and there are a lot of issues we’ll have to look at.”
For example, Petro said that many families plan annual vacations for the summer months, and teens who have jobs rely upon summer jobs to save money for college.
In addition, team sports and extra-curriculars that involve competitions with other school districts that follow a different school calendar could prove challenging, he said.
Barbara Somogyi, a longtime member of the board of education of Community Consolidated School District 59, one of District 214’s feeder elementary district’s, said she would be open to considering a change to the traditional school calendar.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years now,” Somogyi said, “and I do support the idea of starting the conversation.”
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