With winter break behind us and the new year in full swing, it is time for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District to make a change. The current MBUSD calendar is not practical with regard to testing and does not sufficiently allow students to participate in summer programs.
The district calendar is decided upon in a series of meetings between MBUSD and the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association. Under the current calendar, school begins at the end of August or early September and ends around the third week of June. This means that first semester ends not before winter break, but in the final week of January.
MBUSD should consider altering its calendar so that school begins earlier in August and ends earlier in June, consequently placing finals in the week before winter break. This would allow students to experience a carefree winter break devoid of homework, projects and studying for finals looming in January. In other words, winter break would truly be a break.
The Los Angeles Unified School District recently approved a similar calendar for its 2011-12 school year. Their second semester will begin on Jan. 9 directly after winter break.
Although LAUSD is one of the first local districts to make this change, a large number of students favor this “early start” calendar.
According to a La Vista poll of Mira Costa students, 45 percent favor starting school in mid-August, while 57 percent believe that finals should occur before winter break.
The current schedule not only places finals after winter break, but also fails to suitably coincide with Advanced Placement tests in May. If second semester started after winter break, students would have more time to learn all of the information for the course before taking the AP test.
MBUSD’s present calendar gives earlier-starting districts an unintentional advantage because these other schools allow students to learn material for the AP tests in a rational time frame. Currently, many teachers at Mira Costa must rush through information and assign students large sums of work over breaks so that students can learn all of the material in time for the exam.
Thus, in a class such as AP Biology, students not only feel pressured by first semester’s approaching finals over winter break, but they must also cover new materials on their own in order to be prepared for the AP test. It is in the best interest of the district to rectify this unfairness by altering the calendar to start in mid-August.
In addition to being impractical, the current calendar also limits the ability of students to partake in various summer programs. This year, the El Camino College and UCLA summer sessions begin the week of June 20, the same week of Mira Costa’s final exams.
Many students decide to take summer classes at colleges either for pleasure or to fulfill graduation requirements. The existing schedule impedes these opportunities because students cannot miss final exams nor can they afford to miss one week of a six-week summer class. If school ended in early June, students would have the opportunity to make the most out of the summer classes available at local colleges.
Although the district calendar for the 2011-12 school year is already definite, the calendar for the 2012-13 school year has not yet been finalized. This gives MBUSD an opportunity to reevaluate the practicality of the present calendar and consider its consequences for students.
Starting the school year earlier would have overwhelming benefits for the student body. The district needs to realize that there is a time when it is necessary to break tradition in order to serve the best interests of students.
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