Autumn Vacation

J-U-N-E always spells Vacaaaaaation!--Old elementary-school song

Not in the suburban Valley View school district outside Chicago, where F-A-L-L does not necessarily mean back to school, either. There, 1,675 elementary-school children are now on vacation. After their three-week break, the children will return to classes while another 1,675 of Valley View's 6,700 pupils take a holiday. So it goes throughout the year, summer included. Valley View uses its classrooms efficiently, dividing the children into four groups that have staggered schedules of nine weeks on and three weeks off. Thus the school has been able to absorb 1,760 new pupils without putting up a new building. Assistant Superintendent James Gove says the plan is "the equivalent of adding 75 classrooms worth $7,500,000 without spending a cent."

Savage Squeeze. The year-round plan also spreads the load that children put on museums and public libraries. When the stagger system begins at the high school next July, it should keep down the number of idle, trouble-prone teenagers who tend to congregate on the streets during the warm months. Says Thomas Mandeville, father of a Valley View pupil: "The kids used to get bored with summer and restless with the long school year. Breaking it up is good for them. It's good for us too." Most instructors have willingly given up their usual summer vacations or moonlighting jobs for the chance to earn twelve weeks worth of extra pay (they still get a total of three weeks off during breaks for Christmas, Easter and July Fourth).

The opportunity to avoid new construction costs during a savage budget squeeze (TIME, Oct. 4) has prompted at least a dozen other school systems to follow Valley View's two-year-old example. Some have installed air conditioning, but that is a lot cheaper than putting up new buildings. The plan offers no savings, of course, to districts with enough room in their present buildings. Even so, the number of schools using rotation schemes is expected to double next year, and an estimated 1,000 systems are studying the idea.

Legal Obstacle. Proposals for all-year schooling have been around since the 1920s, but the trend began picking up momentum four years ago with voluntary plans like that in Atlanta. Wanting to provide more flexible schedules for students holding part-time jobs or taking special programs, Atlanta, Miami, San Diego and several other communities offer standard courses in summer school. Kids who attend can then take extra subjects--or vacation--in a winter term. The optional plans have done little to alleviate crowding, however. Therefore newer plans like Valley View's are compulsory.

Teachers and administrators are often hesitant about all-year plans because they require rearranging the curriculum into smaller units. A drawback from the viewpoint of parents is the difficulty in taking long family vacations. But in most states approval by the legislature is needed to allow school boards to tinker with the schedule. Many legislators are reluctant. One bill was defeated in New York last spring when legislators from summer-resort areas objected that revisions would hurt their constituents' business.

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