Taylor Elementary dropping year-round school schedule

CEDAR RAPIDS - Instead of a summer break from June to August, students at Taylor Elementary in southwest Cedar Rapids started class in July this school year and had three weeks off from September into October.

For more than 20 years, the school has followed a modified or 'year-round” calendar, forgoing a monthslong summer break for three-week breaks throughout the year.

But beginning this fall, the school of about 300 students is going back to a traditional schedule, the Cedar Rapids Community School District's school board decided this week.

The shift is meant to give Taylor students access to the same academic summer programming as the district's other elementary students, said Val Dolezal, the district's executive director of K-8 Education.

'For our (Taylor) kids, we didn't have intercession opportunities,” Dolezal said, referring to Taylor's three-week breaks. 'We didn't have opportunities for the first weeks they had off in the summer.”

Taylor is the only school in the district on a year-round school calendar. It is one of only six schools in the state on a non-traditional schedule, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Education said.

On traditional, 10-month school schedules, the long summer break is a ripe time for students' loss of learning, dubbed by researchers as the 'summer slide.”

Summer school can be effective in combating that loss, Dolezal said.

'The research around modified or extended year calendar goes both ways,” she said. 'The majority of the research out there is saying it's not about summer, it's more about what the opportunities are when they aren't in school.”

Last summer, more than 600 Cedar Rapids students - none of them from Taylor - participated in Kids on Course University, a program developed with the Zach Johnson Foundation and directed at students with low reading scores.

According to Kids on Course University data, 89 percent of those students 'reduced, eliminated or reversed summer slide in reading.”

'Our Kids on Course kids that went through that university showed growth or were on grade level,” Dolezal said, referencing this fall's testing data. 'Taylor was lower than that.”

Testing data from the 2014-2015 school year, the most recent available from the Iowa Department of Education, shows Taylor's reading scores fall short of the Cedar Rapids district's averages. About 48 percent of third-graders met state reading standards, while 69 percent of all third-graders in the district did.

'Our data is very compelling - we need to be providing this to all students who need it,” Dolezal said. 'And we have the opportunity this year to offer it to a lot more students at Taylor.”

For this upcoming summer, Dolezal said every student at Taylor Elementary will be invited to the Kids on Course University programming, which is free to students. Taylor students also will have access to free transportation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cedar Rapids after those classes.

'I think it's a wonderful thing,” said Pat Cobb, board chairman for the Zach Johnson Foundation. 'There's obviously a lot of need at Taylor, and I think we can make a difference for those kids.”

Students attending other elementary schools in the district will still be invited to Kids on Course University based on academic need, Dolezal said.

The last school day at Taylor Elementary this year is June 1. All students in the Cedar Rapids district are to start the 2017-18 academic year on Aug. 23.

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