c. 2008 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Ava hasn’t been this happy in weeks.

The little dust-mop of a dog, who serves as an unofficial mascot at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish School, scampered from classroom to classroom, wagging her tiny white tail and greeting bright-eyed students who filed in for the first day of school.

First day of school?

There’s nothing wrong with your calendar.

Summer is officially over at Mount Carmel, an anchor for 58 years in Cleveland and one of just a handful of year-round schools in Ohio.

The school’s 280 students, from preschool through eighth grade, attend classes the same number of days as students at any other school. But instead of the traditional, long summer recess, Mount Carmel has four shorter breaks in the fall, winter, spring and summer.

The first year-round school was launched in 1968 in Hayward, Calif. By the 2006-07 school year, there were about 3,000 year-round schools in 46 states, but only 64 of them private.

The year-round school calendar is a radical departure from the still-dominant agrarian-based school schedule from the 19th century that was designed to give children the summer off so they could help in the fields.

“How many children go to the farm to work?” asked Sister M. Rosario Vega, Mount Carmel’s principal. “We have no regrets about going year-round. Our children like it, and our teachers like it. After five weeks off in the summer, they are ready to go back.”

Advocates of year-round schooling contend the system helps students achieve higher and allows teachers to provide a more effective education. It eliminates a long summer break, when lessons of the past school year ooze from children’s brains like air from a punctured tire.

The year-round schedule is especially helpful to schools such as Mount Carmel, which has children from 22 nationalities, some who don’t hear English spoken at home.

Much of the opposition to year-round schooling has come from parents. Some complain the calendar ruins summer vacations and summer jobs and creates havoc with child-care schedules.

But that hasn’t been the case at Mount Carmel, which went year-round six years ago.

“We love it,” said Jim Craciun, an alumnus who has two children in the school. “The two-week break in October is great because no one else is off.”

More important, student achievement is soaring.

Mount Carmel students are often a grade level above their peers and post some of the city’s top scores on entrance exams at the area’s best Catholic high schools.

“The demand here is very high, so it’s an easier transition to high school,” said the Rev. Richard Rasch, the parish priest.

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Going to a year-round schedule was a radical step for a school steeped in tradition. Mount Carmel is run by brothers in flowing white robes and sisters in full habits who are members of the Mercedarian order of the Roman Catholic Church. The children’s lunches are lovingly prepared by Maria Belmonte, the gentle, gray-haired lady who concocts the legendary spaghetti sauce for the parish’s Italian-American festival every summer.

The parish was started more than 80 years ago by Italian immigrants who, tired of Irish-Catholic churches, began Mount Carmel by holding Mass in the basement of a saloon. By the 1980s, a new wave of immigrants, mostly from Puerto Rico, began moving into the neighborhood. Today, Asian, African and Mexican immigrants are turning the area into one of the most diverse sections of Cleveland.

It all adds up to a rich educational experience, said Sister Rosario _ an experience that she thinks is enhanced by the year-round schedule.

“It’s something that works very well for us,” she said. “And, we have air conditioning.”

(Scott Stephens writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

KRE/DS END STEPHENS

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