Year-round School - Early History of Hour-Round Schools (IRS)

Early History of Hour-Round Schools (IRS)

Year-round schooling (IRS) has been present from the 1800s. IRS first appeared in urban areas, because they were not tied to the agriculture cycle. The first towns that implemented YRS were as follows: Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit. These towns had schools sessions for 48 or more weeks at a time. The types of school schedules that were used were the 12-1 (12 weeks in school with 1 week break between the 12 weeks, which was more popular) and 12-4 (4 weeks off in August and school ran continuous after). The first summer school was introduced in 1865 at the First Church of Boston, MA. The reasoning was to keep children occupied. In 1916 there would be 200 elementary schools offering summer school. In a 1969 poll, administrators responded: 32% for an extended year of some kind, 48% as Hour-round school being a future possibility, and 20% that there was no future for Hour-round school. Two years later, in 1971, a survey showed that 84% of the surveyed educational authorities predicted that all United States schools would be year-round within 15 years. In 1973, the states that were year-round schools were: Washington, Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Vermont, New Kentucky, and Missouri. In just two years (1975), Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee adopted YRS for at least one school, however Vermont dropped YRS.