Filed by Michael Cross in Education, Feature, Local News, News.
August 1, 2011
 

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School starts in Oklahoma City today, and the new school year brings big changes for students.

Today, Oklahoma City Public Schools becomes the first district in the state and only the second urban district in the country to have a continuous learning calendar.

Superintendent Karl Springer says under the new calendar the school year gets spread out, and he hopes that means students retain more, and those who fall behind get help immediately.

“In October there’ll be two weeks there that we’ll be able to bring some of our children in to be remediated. At Christmas vacation, winter break we’ll be able to do the same thing. We’ll also do that for spring break.”

Under the continuous learning calendar, the school year will be longer, starting August first and ending May 31st, but students will still only get the 175 instructional days required by state law.

Springer says his ultimate goal is to increase talks at the state legislature about adding more instructional time.

“We need to be 200 days in Oklahoma. We need to be 200 days everywhere in the United States. As we added this continuous learning calendar what I’m hoping is we’ll be positioned to add days to our calendar.”

Springer says just adding a half hour ever day would increase the calendar year by 14 and a half days.

While other schools have considered moving to a continuous calendar, officials have worried about how this would affect sporting events during the long break periods of fall, winter and spring.

Springer says he doesn’t expect there to be a problem because of the dedication Oklahoma City athletes have to their teams.

He adds the early start to the school year allows more time to dedicate to training before the games begin.