Katie Oxendine
Both the balanced calendar and the traditional calendar have the same amount of school days. The thing that is different between them is how the in-session days and the out-of-session days are split up. The question is which calendar suits Davenport Central better?

Having a traditional calendar means that we have a long summer vacation of 12 weeks, followed by long periods of in-session days with small breaks in between. The most common types of the balanced calendar are the 45-15 and the 60-20, where for example, you would go to school 45 days and then have a 15 day break.

The balanced calendar’s main goal is to help students retain the information they learn in school; which is not a ridiculous idea. With the traditional calendar, research shows that there is a summer learning loss. Over the 12 week summer break, students aren’t practicing their math skills or working on spelling. When they return to school, teachers have to spend weeks on review, taking out of the time when they could be teaching new material.

Coming back to school after a three day weekend is hard for students because they can’t get focused. Over the extended break, they get a taste of freedom and they don’t want to give that up. So, the longer breaks in between school days on a balanced calendar are hard for students to come back from as well.

Some people believe that summer is a main part of a child’s development. They believe that the summer affects a child’s growth, family relationships and traditions, learning and enrichment opportunities, and the economy of seasonal communities. Many vacation hot spots, such as the Wisconsin Dells and Disney World, get a lot of their profits during the summer months. With the balanced calender, the window of time when most families are on summer vacation is shortened.

"I prefer the traditional school calendar better. I need a long summer to recover from school," Nick Morrison said.

If the District wanted to convert to the balanced calendar, they would have to have all of the schools following it. There are many families in the community with more than one child, with each child at a different school. If for example, an elementary school went to the balanced calendar but the high school didn’t, it would be hard for the family to plan vacations. Everyone would be on different schedules and this would lead to multiple complaints.

“My mom is a teacher at Madison Elementary, which is year-round, and when we get out of school for summer she is still in school. We always have to call her and ask her if we can do stuff and go out,” Tom Farrell said.

Why can’t the school have a balanced calendar? Well, the balanced calendar has in-session days in the summer. Would you like to be sitting in a classroom while it’s 95 degrees outside without air conditioning? It would cost a lot of money for the district to put air conditioning in each school, and this is money that they do not have.

In Iowa there are only five schools that are on the balanced calendar, with only 2,540 students enrolled. Here in Davenport, there are seven elementary schools on the balanced calendar: Buchanan, Fillmore, Hayes, Madison, Monroe, Truman, and Washington.

“I love being on the balanced calendar. The only downfall is that when we have two week breaks, the kids come back unfocused. My only suggestion would be to shorten the breaks,” Annie Farrell, a teacher at Madison Elementary, said.

The original goal for the Davenport School District was to convert every school to the balanced calendar. For this to happen, each school would need to be air conditioned. Because of the district’s low budget, they could only put air conditioning in two schools a year. North High School was scheduled to be the first high school with the balanced calendar, but they have not taken this into action yet.

The question is, balanced calendar or traditional? There are strong arguments for each. It all depends on where the school is located, the district’s budget, and the opinions of the community.