Single-Track School Calendars

Even though the traditional school calendar was based on the agricultural labor needs of America. The American people, over the years, have developed and implemented modern technologies that are making the need for agricultural labor increasingly obsolete. Due to the fact that fewer people are needed today to provide the same, if not more, food than that of which was grown in the past. There has been a shift in the amount of people in which are needed to support the farming industry. With that, families began to move into urban and suburban areas to take on other jobs. Since large numbers of families moved from rural areas to city-like environments, this led to intercity and urban schools receiving an influx of students, forcing them, …show more content…
To explain, singletrack school calendars consist of the students and teachers being in session or out of session on a 45-15, 60-20… schedule (Educational Leadership 83-4). Single-track schools can be comparable to that of traditional school years, but the Single-track calendar is spread out over the course of a twelve month period. The financial budget of the school district would in most cases remain the same or comparable to a traditional calendar. The budget would be comparable because when the Single-track calendar is implemented the school year is usually extended by a few days, increasing the salary budget for teachers, added maintenance/utility costs, etc. Budgets for maintenance and utility would increase as a result of the school’s facilities being used …show more content…
This goes back to the fact that not all students and teachers are in session at the same time. Since not everyone is in the classroom at a time, they are able to accommodate more classroom space for other students. In each track the school develops, both teachers and students would be divided up equally between how many tracks they might have, in most cases they would be divided up into four or five tracks. Each track would then be given its own schedule (usually a 45 on/15 off or 60/20, etc.) and the teachers and students assigned to that schedule would remain in the schedule and follow its vacation breaks and in-session periods. The multi-track schedule is used for school districts that are not able to find the funding or do not wish to build more facilities to accommodate all of their students. Switching to a multi-track schedule could help a school district save on operational costs, since they do not have to hire as many new teachers for the new classrooms that would be built and the school district does not have to pay for the upkeep of permanent or temporary