PICKENS COUNTY — The School District of Pickens County Board of Trustees has approved the calendar for the 2021-22 school year, which has Summer Vacation shortened by three weeks.
According to the new calendar, classes for the 2021-22 school year will begin on Aug. 3, 2021. (Last year, school started Aug. 24).
The district defended the earlier start time as a means to help combat the so-called “summer slide” — when students tend to regress from lessons learned over the previous school year.
The concept of the summer slide has been on researchers’ radar since at least 1996, when one of the first comprehensive studies on the phenomenon was published. The study showed that kids lose significant knowledge in reading and math over summer break, which tends to have a snowball effect as they experience subsequent skill loss each year. A more recent study of children in 3rd to 5th grades also showed that students lost, on average, about 20 percent of their school-year gains in reading and 27 percent of their school-year gains in math during summer break.
Additionally, younger children are prone to the most learning loss because they’re at a crucial stage in their development.
“In general, kids learn a lot more in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade than kids in middle school or high school, because learning follows a curve where it’s accelerated early in life and then plateaus,” said James Kim, Ed.D., an assistant professor of education at Harvard University. “Things like decoding, letter knowledge, and word reading skills are very susceptible to decay without frequent practice, as are math facts like addition and subtraction.”
Children from low-income families are also disproportionately affected by the summer slide, in ways that can affect them years into their education. In fact, research cited by Kim shows that more than half of the gap in reading scores between low-income 9th graders and their middle-income peers could be attributed to differences in summer learning accumulated between first and fifth grade.
“The early start date will result in a shorter summer vacation at the conclusion of the current school year, but the district believes the shortened summer break will be beneficial in curbing summer learning loss after an unusual school year due to the pandemic,” SDPC officials said.
But stats aside, not all parents are happy with the new schedule.
“This is ridiculous. They’ve lost almost an entire month,” MaKenzie Owens, mom to a third-grader in Easley said. “If this keeps up, they might as well go year-round, full time. These are kids, they need their Summer vacations — not to mention that’s when a lot of families go on vacation.”
Also included in the approved calendar:
• An in-service day on September 3;
• October break shortened from five days to 2;
• No school on November 1 in order to provide a break between October and Thanksgiving;
• No school on February 4 and 18 in order to provide breaks during flu and snow season;
• Normal school day on April 15;
• Last day of school moved to May 26 from May 27.
The school district will continue the use of Digital Learning Days for inclement weather in the next school year. If Remote Learning Days are necessary because of COVID-19, the district said it will continue to announce those changes throughout the school year in six-week increments.
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