Year-round schools a first for many

Thousands of Wake County students ended their brief summer vacation today and headed for the first day of classes at year-round schools.

The county more than doubled its number of year-round schools to 46, adding 22 schools that were converted from a traditional-calendar to keep up with growth in enrollment.

At the same time, the families of more than 2,600 students opted out of year-round schools in favor of schools that follow a traditional calendar. A court order this year required the Wake schools to get parental consent to send students to year-round schools,

Consequently, most year-round schools are underenrolled and many traditional-calendar schools are overcrowded.

It was much like the first day of any school today, with parents video-recording their children and bringing in bags full of school supplies.

But there were some noticeable differences for many families who are not used to the year-round calendar, which has breaks throughout the year instead of a long summer vacation. Many parents this morning asked school employees for help deciphering the schedule.

"This is just a mess," said Greg Wilson," whose child attends Salem Elementary in Apex, one of the schools that converted to a year-round schedule. "It's so confusing."

But other parents were more upbeat about the new schedule.

"I don't have any problems with it," said Mike Proctor, whose son started kindergarten today at Salem Elementary. "It's fine with me."

Since 1991, Wake has used multitrack year-round schools because they can house more students than traditional schools by putting the buildings in constant use. Students are divided into four groups, or tracks, with three in session at all times.

Students in three year-round tracks started class today; those on track 4 start in August.

About 38,000 students are expected to attend year-round schools this year, representing about 28 percent of the system's total enrollment.

Wake school officials will not have final enrollment figures for the year-round schools until early August. Depending on the numbers, some teachers may be reassigned and some vacant positions for teachers' aides may be eliminated.

Before the ruling requiring parental consent, school officials thought they'd be welcoming 3,000 more students to converted elementary schools. Instead, only 500 more students were expected.

When school leaders said they needed to come up with a way to handle the 8,000 new students expected this fall, they voted in February to convert 22 schools to a year-round calendar.

The plans were thrown into doubt when Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. ruled that mandatory year-round schools are illegal. He said the school district needed parental consent to send students to year-round schools.

More than 90 percent of Wake families gave their consent to go to year-round schools.

But the 10 percent who left -- about 2,600 students -- and other families whom the year-round calendar may have scared away from moving to the area have eroded most of the enrollment gains this fall that would have come from the conversions.

"We didn't realize we would have a ruling that says we can't assign students to year-round," said the school board's chairwoman, Rosa Gill. "Our whole capital improvement plan was based on being able to assign students and maintain healthy schools. That hasn't changed. Now that one of the assumptions has been pulled out, we have to work around them. We can't give up."