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View Full Version : Check the CA year-round school schedule before you go!



edtsch
11-10-2003, 07:11 AM
Greetings, all -

I just got back from a fun trip to DL and DCA, Oct. 15th - 19th. We had a great time, but the park was three times more crowded than I expected it to be. Turns out that lots of the California (and, I think, Arizona and Utah) school systems were on year-round schedules that were on break that week.

My guide book said nothing about checking into this, so I wanted to warn others. I met this couple from California who said that in their dozen or so visits to the park, they had never seen it so crowded! And I was trying to be the consummate trip planner and choose a sparcely-attended time of year! :rolleyes:

Granted, three e-ticket attractions were closed, which drives more traffic to those that are open, but I still wasn't expecting the summer-weekday kind of crowdes we ran into.

Does anyone know of a website where we can check this sort of thing out in advance?

adriennek
11-10-2003, 09:09 AM
Well, I don't quite understand what year-round schedule you're talking about... The thing about "Year Round" schools is that there is always a group off-track/on vacation. This month, my son is off. He's also off in March and July. Next month, the group that gets August, December, and April will be off. In January there's a group that's off in January, May, and September.

Generally, where we live, the August/December/April schedule is the most popular, followed closely by the July/November/March schedule.

Adrienne

edtsch
11-10-2003, 09:44 AM
Oh. I figured that lots of schools ran on the same schedules.

Even if they do scatter their vacations, wouldn't there be weeks when no one was on break? it would be great if there were someplace to go on the web to look into this.

MammaSilva
11-10-2003, 09:48 AM
With the increase in year round schools especially here in California, don't expect that to happen anytime soon. Add in the conference breaks, the annual spring/winter breaks that all schools have, and it's getting harder and harder to find a true "off season" to visit the parks. At this time I don't know of any central 'bank' of school schedules for the state, you have to visit each districts website and that is a task not many are willing to undertake even if they knew all the names of the school districts in the surrounding area of Disneyland itself, not to mention the rest of the state.

adriennek
11-10-2003, 10:08 AM
Originally posted by dreamer
Even if they do scatter their vacations, wouldn't there be weeks when no one was on break?

No, there isn't.

The purpose of Year-Round schools is to make space at schools that are over-capacity.

There are 4 morning kindergarten classes at my son's school and there are only 3 kindergarten classrooms. There is always one classroom's-worth of morning kinder students not in school. During Winter Break and for 1 week in June, no one is in school, but there is never a time when all four tracks are at school at the same time.

If that didn't confuse you, this might:

In July, Group A, B, and C came to school in rooms 1, 2, and 3. Group D was on vacation.

In August, Group A went on Vacation, left room 1 and Group D came to school and moved into Room 1.

In September, Group B went on vacation, leaving room 2. Group A came back to school, moving into room 2.

In October, Group C went on vacation, leaving room 3 and Group B came back, moving into room 3.

Now in November, Group D is on vacation again. They left room 1 and when they come back, they'll go to room 2.

Thus, 4 classes share 3 classrooms. There cannot physically be 4 classes at one time because there is no room for the 4th class.

There are some schools that are single track year-round schools that do so in order to save on operating costs, but there still isn't any one time that no one is on break.


it would be great if there were someplace to go on the web to look into this.

Keep in mind that different school districts use different year-round calendars. My son's school is on a 4-track system sometimes referred to as 90-30, sometimes it's 60-20, depending on how you count the days. LA Unified uses a different calendar. I think it's called 45-15 or something?

My cousin is a speech pathologist at a school in Santa Ana that uses a "modified traditional calendar." In the school district where I taught, not all of the schools are on year-round, some are traditional and some are one-track year-round schedules. Not all of those schools choose the same track.

Meanwhile, let's not forget teacher inservice days, parent-teacher conference days (some schools have days off, some only have minimum days,) or religious holidays that various private schools offer. My SIL worked at a private school that had a "ski week" break every winter, separate from traditional winter break.

It would give me a statistical-mathematical headache to try to figure out when every school in Southern California had a break. If you really feel it will be an issue, you could visit the various school district calendars for the So Cal districts: most of them are online (I see Mammasilva already mentioned that.)

I honestly don't think that the school break was the reason for the crowds you experienced (or the only reason.) I wonder if the lack of attractions in Tomorrowland and the various rides that are closed for rehab and/or investigations simply moved the crowds around so that some areas seem more crowded than usual.

Adrienne

edtsch
11-10-2003, 02:41 PM
Wow! Well, now I know. Thanks for all the info.

DisneyFan25863
11-10-2003, 04:13 PM
When I was in elementry school, we operated on a 4 track year....I was on the May-September-Janurary calandar Adrienne mentioned. The funny thing about that is that the elementry schools out here no longer have year-round. It's all traditional. At my school, we go on a "modified traditional calandar", which is basically one where we go to school early August, go straigt til Thanksgiving, where we get a week off, then to Winter, where we have 3 weeks off, then to Spring, where we have a week 1/2 off. We get out of school early to mid June. Works for me :)

adriennek
11-10-2003, 04:20 PM
Originally posted by DisneyFan25863
The funny thing about that is that the elementry schools out here no longer have year-round. It's all traditional.

My guess is that your district has built new schools to help eliminate some of the capacity issues and/or your neighborhood has grown older without replacing the elementary-aged students (this happened in my parents' district and over the years the district has had to close several schools.)

Schools in my former district are going to one-track year-round schedules because the district maintains that it costs less to operate on a year-round schedule (something strange about electricity costs being better if they can just keep running all year long than if they "shut down" over the summer and "re-open" in the fall.)

Adrienne