Angel Johnson’s daughter has had about 125 more days of school than most other Maryland fourth graders.

That’s because, since kindergarten, she’s attended Silver Spring’s Arcola Elementary. The campus operates on a school calendar extended to minimize learning loss — the academic backsliding that can happen during a long break.

Many families, like the Johnsons, love their extra weeks of class.

“Her test scores and her aptitude and her ability show that it’s beneficial for her to be in school for more days,” said Johnson, proudly pointing to exam results that position her daughter between the 86th and 97th percentiles in different subjects.

But Montgomery County Public Schools leaders say the longer academic year hasn’t paid off. Superintendent Thomas Taylor recently recommended reverting Arcola to the traditional calendar to save the district an estimated $1.4 million.

Officials say attendance during the summer months – when Arcola holds classes while the rest of the district’s schools are closed – takes a hit. More than half of students were considered chronically absent during the summer session.

Overall enrollment at Arcola also fluctuates during the school year, dropping precipitously during the summer. On June 13, the last day of the traditional calendar, roughly 730 students were enrolled at Arcola, according to district data. By July 8, that number fell under 550.

By January, it bounced back to about 700 kids.

“People are electing to enroll their students in alignment with the traditional school calendar. Not all, but a large portion of them,” said Peter Moran, a top district leader. “This may be an indicator that the innovative calendar does not work for large numbers of families.”

The story of Arcola, which adopted an extended calendar the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, could hold insights not just for Montgomery County, but districts across the country. Several education officials considered using their federal pandemic relief funds to extend their school years.

The reasoning was simple: Children lost learning time because of shuttered campuses and ineffective virtual classes. More time in school, they hoped, could reverse students’ massive academic setbacks.

The reality proved more complex.

“There are just a lot of forces pushing for the status quo in K-12 education,” said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab.

Extending Arcola’s year

In a district of more than 200 schools, Montgomery County chose two campuses for its experiment with a longer school year.

Arcola and Roscoe Nix — elementary schools that serve mostly low-income families and students who struggle academically — launched the new calendar in 2019, tacking on more than a month of school.

Then-Superintendent Jack Smith said he was hopeful that, if it proved successful, the district could extend the calendar for more campuses. He urged education leaders to challenge the idea that a traditional 180-day school year, designed more than a century ago, was the best option for today’s students.

“We’re completely stuck in that pattern,” Smith said at the time. “And so you have — for many, many students — the summer learning loss.”

The idea resonated with many Arcola families. Roughly two-thirds of its students are Hispanic, nearly a quarter are Black and about 60% are considered economically disadvantaged.

PTA President Natalie LaLonde said the model works. Teachers get far more hours in front of children, boosting them in the fundamentals. Plus, parents don’t have to spend their time or money competing for spots in summer camps.

“Kids and families that have less often get less,” LaLonde said. “But that has never been the case at Arcola.”

But district officials raised questions about the calendar’s effectiveness. An evaluation from the 2022-23 school year found that “despite five-and-a-half weeks of additional instruction, [the extended calendar] did not have a detectable effect on student reading and mathematics performance by year end.”

By 2024, Roscoe Nix reverted back to the traditional calendar. The school saw declines in both its student mobility and chronic absenteeism rates after it did so, Moran said.

At the time, Arcola families and teachers fought off a similar fate. They told district leaders that extra school time brought immeasurable learning, safety and a sense of community to children who needed it most. A more recent program evaluation found students in fourth and fifth grades “showed positive outcomes.”

Arcola’s scores still lag behind district averages. About one-third of its third graders are considered proficient in reading, compared to 55% across Montgomery County Public Schools.

Logistical hurdles

The challenges of running a longer school year can thwart a school district’s plans before they give it a try.

The idea can fall apart when parents complain the model would disrupt family vacations or when teachers warn they’d burn out without the summer break. There can be resistance to disrupting the educational norm, as well as concerns about the extra cost.

At the same time Montgomery County embraced the extended calendar experiment, the D.C. public school system ended a similar program of its own. Officials in the neighboring district pointed to poor attendance rates, teacher dissatisfaction and insignificant academic improvements.

In Richmond, Virginia, the superintendent pushed an ambitious attempt to lengthen the school year in response to the pandemic’s devastating impact on reading and math scores. After resistance from some educators, parents and school board members, the district ended up piloting the model at just two campuses. It later expanded to four of 25 elementary schools.

Montgomery County appeared to struggle more with maintaining the experiments than launching them.

District leaders pointed to logistical hurdles when making the case to bring Arcola back to the traditional calendar.

Other than concerns about attendance patterns, officials said that having a single school out of sync with the rest of the district caused challenges for families who send their kids to multiple campuses.

“I would love to see MCPS explore various year-round models in the future, but for the time being, the most prudent course of action is to pause,” Superintendent Thomas Taylor wrote in an email to families.

His message was clear about the financial pressures, too. The district faces steep inflationary pressures and declining enrollment. This stark budget reality, Taylor said, is triggering tough choices.

“The innovative calendar adds costs for staffing, transportation, and operations, and the traditional calendar will allow for greater efficiency at a time when resources must be carefully managed,” he wrote.

If Arcola reverts back to the traditional calendar, educators worry about losing the extra salary and stipends they earned during the summer. Fifth grade teacher Karen McKiernan said she is already looking for extra jobs to help her pay bills. A friend recommended she start working at a camp; another suggested bartending.

“If I have to work three jobs, that might be what I have to do,” McKiernan said.

Family advocacy

Arcola families are still fighting to keep their calendar.

They believe school leaders are cherry-picking data to make the extended year program appear unsuccessful. For example, they pointed to district officials’ comments about how many kids miss school during the summer.

Chronic absenteeism is defined as a student missing 10% or more of school days, so during the summer, that equates to 2.5 days.

“My kid gets sick, and she could miss three days of school,” Arcola parent Shahirah Mahmood said. “I’m sorry, but that definition is not a meaningful or serious indicator.”

Her daughter, Sarah Nora Helms, tried a direct appeal to the school board.

“​​When kids go for a longer summer break, they’ll forget stuff,” the third grader said in a video message to the board. “They’ll forget the things they’ve learned and forget school rules.”

McKiernan’s fifth grade students lived through the pandemic and the disruptions it caused during their earliest years.

“They have holes in their learning. And over the summer, it gives us the time to really build up the skills,” McKiernan said. “Now, are those holes filled totally? Absolutely not. But if I didn’t have that time, then I would be rushing through the curriculum and just moving on.”

The teacher said Arcola is a lighthouse for families struggling with housing insecurity, language barriers and other hardships.

While attendance can be unstable and academic progress is fragile, she said, “those realities aren’t caused by the calendar — they are the storm.”