The Prince George’s County delegation will propose a bill this spring that would authorize year-round school, but school officials say the extra costs likely would prevent immediate implementation.

If the bill passes during the 2012 legislative session, Prince George’s would join six other jurisdictions that can opt for a year-round school calendar to add on to the more than the current 180 days of instruction.

“When you look around the world at school systems that are ranked No. 1, their students are in school longer than our students,” said school board member Henry P. Armwood Jr. (Dist. 7). “We need to have that option.”

The school board voted unanimously Nov. 9 to support the bill.

Logistics and the price of upending the current school calendar would present challenges such as increased transportation, food service and heating and cooling costs, said A. Duane Arbogast, the school system’s chief academic officer. And the school year still would need to correspond to state and national standardized testing schedules.

School board member Edward Burroughs III (Dist. 8) supports year-round schooling but said the system doesn’t have the financial resources to implement it now, given the $155 million budget gap the system closed for fiscal 2012 and the $43 million gap it faces for fiscal 2013.

“We don’t have enough money to do that... but we want to have the option,” Burroughs said. “The data shows the longer students are in school, the more successful they are.”

He suggested the county’s high-need turnaround schools or Title I schools could pursue grants that would fund a longer school year.

Arbogast said year-round scheduling doesn’t necessarily mean students spend more time in school as a popular format cycles students through 45 days in school and 15 days out of school, and more frequent breaks might increase the job satisfaction of school system employees, Arbogast said.

“There are certain times of year you get really tired working in schools,” he said, referring to the end of September/early October, March and May.

Nkenge Temoney, a Glenn Dale resident whose children attend Glenn Dale Elementary School and Fairmont Heights High School, said she likes the idea of year-round school, but she would have to arrange for child care during school breaks.

“I think the kids should be involved in learning all year round,” she said.

Research shows children who attend school all year retain more information than those who have a long summer break, such as the county’s 10-week summer, Arbogast said, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into increased overall academic achievement.

Lori Morrow, the president of the parent-teacher association at Tulip Grove Elementary School in Bowie, said attending school all year would prevent her third-grade son from losing information during the summer. However, the schedule change would limit when her family could travel.

Morrow also worried if elementary, middle and high schools were not on the same schedule, her son and her daughter, who is in preschool, would be in school at different times.

Del. Aisha Braveboy (D-Dist. 25) of Mitchellville acknowledged the cost of operating schools year-round, but called it an “investment in our future.”

“It’s a relatively small price to pay for an educated, innovative workforce,” she said.

abrownback@gazette.net