'BLEND IS IN FOR 3 SCHOOLS IN DISTRICT YEAR-ROUND CALENDAR OUT.

Byline: Eugene Tong Staff Writer

CANYON COUNTRY - The Sulphur Springs School District board adopted a new calendar Wednesday for seven of its eight campuses, a move that would end the year-round schedule at three schools in the upcoming year.

The Board of Trustees voted 4-0 to approve the so-called ``blended'' calendar, which includes a mid-August start, a weeklong fall vacation and longer winter and spring breaks.

The schedule will be enacted at all campuses for the 2003-04 school year with the exception of Pinetree Community School. With close to 1,000 students, the campus has operated on a multitrack, year-round calendar since 1991 to manage over-enrollment.

``There is not enough space (at Pinetree) to accommodate a single calendar,'' said Kathy Wright, assistant superintendent of instruction. ``They need (year-round multitrack) because a quarter of students are off. It gives you room at the facility for more students.''

In recent years, overcrowding has forced some campuses to shift from a traditional schedule to variations of the year-round calendar, which left schools in the district operating on one of three different schedules.

While most campuses opened from September through June, Pinetree and Sulphur Springs schools had a year-round, multitrack calendar, with a quarter of their pupils off at any given point in the year. Meanwhile, Valley View and Fair Oaks Ranch were on single-track, year-round schedule, in which students get a 20-day break for every 60 days of classes.

``We had so much growth that the schools' sites couldn't hold the students that were coming into the doors,'' Wright said.

But with enrollment slightly leveling off and the district holding at roughly 5,500 students, officials took the opportunity to consolidate the campuses around one common calendar. A committee of parents, teachers and administrators formed last October recommended a blended calendar partly based on the area's projected growth for the next five years, Wright said.

``There were a couple of parents who liked a more traditional schedule,'' she said. ``But one of the things that parents want was something as closely aligned as possible to the (William S. Hart Union High School District) calendar. Many of the parents have in children in both districts.''

Educators also preferred the schedule, which shortened the summer break to two months, on the basis that students could better retain what they learned.

``What we've found is when they have almost three months off in the summer, they can forget what they've learned,'' Wright said.

As for Pinetree, district officials see an opportunity to bring the remaining year-round campus under the new calendar in a few years, as new schools and expansion projects are completed.

``I look forward to the day when Pinetree joins all the other schools on that calendar,'' trustee Michael Hogan said Wednesday.