Year-around School Plan Has Serious Drawbacks

TtxESPITE sbme fairly persuasive arguments which have been made in support of the yeararound school concept, The News has not been won over. The fourquarter plan, as it has been called, may be more trouble than it's worth. But how will Ann Arbor know unless it is tried out hertf True, but the fact remains the plan has been adopted by many school systems throughout the country and, after some experierice with it, dropped. This is one of the strongest indictments which could be turned in against the year-around school. There are other drawbacks. We'd like to hear more from the teachers in this respect. It's our feeling that teachers wouldn't take kinclly to full-time work, that they would sorely miss the three months away from school now profitably spent in educational travel, research, reading and other delights. FOUR quarters strongly suggest more paperwork, more record keeping and possibly more staff. We're not at all sure greater efficiency would result. And let's not forget the kids, because they're the ones who have to readjust four times to schedules, classmates and teachers. Extracurriculars, especially athletics, would take a beating under the year-around plan. Obviously, it wouldn't do to have the football players have the fall quarter as their vacation period. (The poor two-sport athlete would be in a bad bind). Experts contend the plan is no good unless an equal number of students are spread over the four quarters. All right. But doesn't that mean redrawing attendance boundaries and additional busing costs? We remember only too well the big fuss over attendance boundaries and busing during the school board's discussions of de facto segregation. Do we go through that all over again, or are there different standards which apply to the year-around school? WHEN it comes right down to it, the four-quarter plan proposes to tinker with some pretty basic things. To take one isolated case - the seasonal influx of students into the work force - the schools are geared to the economy, not the economy to the schools. And what really is being changed, the operations of the schools or basic, longstanding family, community and society living patterns? It's the latter, of course, and these are awfully hard to change. As far as we can teil, the plan suggested by Trustee William C. Godfrey has not caught fire here, either among the parents or the kids. The economies his plan proposes to effect wè are led to telieve are largely imagined. The Ímpetus fpr change, what little there is, is being supplied not by the teachers or the parents or the kids but by the weight of krguments which, when put to the test, have not stood up well.