Year-Round Plan Offers Teachers New Perks, but Also Some Pitfalls

The three best reasons to be a teacher, the old joke goes, are June, July and August. That isn’t why most of us became teachers (honest!), but long summers have been a prized fringe benefit of the job.

But in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the joke no longer applies. The traditional three-month summer break is now history.

Under the new calendar that takes effect in the coming school year at most L.A. Unified schools, summer vacation is cut from about 10 weeks to eight, and the two-week winter break is stretched to nearly eight weeks also.

Surprisingly, most of the teachers I talked with liked the new vacation plan--and especially the travel opportunities brought by a longer winter break.

“We’ll be able to travel off-season and the (air fare and hotel) rates will be cheaper,” said Nikki McDaniels, a science teacher at Palisades High School. Also, “a lot of people in our department ski, so now they’ll have eight weeks for it,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Thomas Chatham, a career adviser at Palisades High. “We have a home in Palm Springs and that means we’ll be able to go (there) from December to February, which is great weather there.”

Another benefit of the new winter break is that the first semester will end sooner, said George Schoenman, chairman of the English department at Fairfax High School. Returning after winter break for three more weeks of fall semester “seemed like an addendum or an anticlimax,” he said.

“You go on vacation, the semester’s over, and when you come back you’re starting a brand new semester--that’s a lot more logical,” he said.

But not everyone will enjoy a complete break from school in the winter. The winter sports season will begin in the third week of the break, so coaches of basketball, soccer and wrestling will still have to report for two hours every day.

Although the winter coaches will be paid for their efforts, “some of these coaches are going to be upset that they have to leave their vacation to come in just for a few hours,” said Gary Pozzo, chairman of the physical education department at Hamilton High School.

“This is not going to be workable,” warned Duane La Rue, University High School’s athletic director. “I’ve already had conversations with a number of people who are not going to coach under those conditions.”

Besides coaches, some teachers of Advanced Placement classes may also have to work during winter break. The purpose of the courses is to prepare kids for the Advanced Placement exams, which can excuse them from some required introductory courses when they reach college.

The longer winter break means that the students will have less classroom preparation. “We don’t have enough time to get them ready for the AP test in May,” said Rose Gilbert, an English teacher at Palisades High.

But this shouldn’t be a problem, said Joyce Peyton, administrator of priority housing for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “AP teachers can tutor those kids (for pay) during that time, four hours per week,” she said.

Incidentally, Gilbert doesn’t think that Palisades’ highly regarded Academic Decathlon team, which finished second in the state this year, will be affected by the winter recess. “We keep on going, vacation or no vacation. We’d be fine,” she said.

The new schedule will also have some effect on teachers’ incomes. Although salaries won’t change, the distribution of paychecks will. Teachers have traditionally received 10 paychecks each year--one each month, except in July and August. Now they will be paid all 12 months, so the money will be spread more thinly.

To Ann Rosato, chairwoman of Hamilton High’s English department, this is bad news. “The part that scares me the most is that each paycheck is going to be a little bit smaller,” she said. “It’s going to make a lot of difference because I have a lot of bills, and I’ve been a single mom for many years.”

On the brighter side, the new calendar may present teachers with more opportunity to make money. In addition to the usual option of teaching summer school, there will now be a session taught during the winter break.

Several teachers expressed concern that the shortened summer break would make it difficult for them to take courses in summer. But major colleges and universities have already made plans to adapt. UCLA, for example, will simply add classes that will fit the Los Angeles teachers’ summer schedules.

Some of the teachers were generally optimistic about the new year-round calendar. McDaniels and Chatham both said they are looking forward to it, and Pozzo added, “I don’t see really a whole lot of problems.”

Rosato is more cautious. “I guess it’s too unknown--I feel a little nervous, but I’m hoping I’ll be wrong.”

La Rue, however, is flat-out opposed to the whole idea: “I just can’t believe that this is going to happen,” he said.