Staff Writer
The Wake County Public
School System is studying the feasibility of offering a traditional option at
some year-round schools. This comes in response to concerns voiced by many
parents regarding getting their children into the already over-crowded traditional-calendar
schools around the county. Even though year-round schools have been operating
in Wake County for 25 years, there are still many families who prefer the
traditional schedule. Because of a fall in growth in some schools, some Wake
County year-round schools have been switched to a single-track calendar while
still operating with three-week breaks associated. Other schools were changed
to the traditional calendar.
If Wake County does
choose to implement these changes, they wouldn’t take effect until at least the
2016-2017 school year, and the schools involved would have to accommodate at
least six traditional classrooms in elementary schools and at least 12
traditional classrooms in middle schools.
The need for more traditional options is present in the Town of Apex. The three main middle schools in Apex are Lufkin Road Middle School, Salem Middle School, and Apex Middle School, with Apex Middle being the only traditional option. Families who live in neighborhoods that are assigned to one of the year-round options have to apply to get into Apex Middle, and, due to the discrepancies between the number of students Apex can accommodate and the number that want to go there, many students don’t get in. This leaves some families with children on different schedules and only a few weeks of shared vacation time during the year.
