When I was eight years old I moved to another city, and a different school district. I lived in that city from 1992-1994; and attended school in grades third and fourth.

I went from going to a traditional school year (from September to June) to a year round school. I've heard that there are different schedules for year round schools. The major misconception I've heard about was that people thought the school year was only three months long, and you just kept starting a new school year every three months.

My schedule was go to school for three months and get one month off. My school had different “tracks”. Each track was labeled with a letter, there were 4 of them. There were tracks; A, B, C, and D. I don't remember what the schedule was for every track, but track C was the most desirable, and full. When I registered for school they let me pick the track and told me C was full. I think there might have been a waiting list to get on it. I think Track C’s months off were August, December and April. I decided to go with track B which gave me the month of January off which is the month my birthday is in. I liked not having to go to school on my birthday. Track B’s schedule was September, January and May were the months off. It gave me an extended winter break; which really helped the time I had chicken pox on my ninth birthday. I liked getting September off because I got to see the shows that premiered in September. May was also a good month to get off because I got watch the tv show season and series finales that aired in May. My mom was kinda upset that I didn't get a summer month off.

The school year ran from late June to early July. In third grade my school year started in June 1992 and ended in July 1993. We got the week off during the Fourth of July. That week separated the school years unless you were on the tracks that got the month of June or July off. The local stores were stocking school supplies in late June early July which at first I thought was strange. Now that the stores are stocking school supplies in July it just seems like a throwback to my year round school days.

The year round schedule was only for the elementary school. The junior high and high school students were on a traditional schedule. (Oh the joys of being an older millennial!)I remember my friend saying that she couldn't wait to be in junior high because she would go on a traditional school schedule. I think my friend was in fifth grade at the time. The elementary schools only went up to sixth grade.

The different tracks made the school extremely cliquish. Nobody really wanted to be friends with somebody on another track. You wouldn't be able to see each other at school for two months per break month.

I guess it was probably easier for parents to keep siblings on the same track. I don't know since it didn't matter which track I was on since I'm an only child.

During the months off there was no summer school obviously, so the school had month long programs to watch and entertain the kids. I never participated in these I just used to stay home and watch cartoons and daytime tv.

The school did not give a spring break. People would just miss a week of school for spring break; unless you had the month of April off. Easter fell during April in 1993 and 1994.

The kids on my street who went to private school were very arrogant about their traditional school schedule. Out of all the kids I knew on the street about eleven of them; four of them went to private school. They were a group of three siblings and another girl not related to them. The approximately other seven kids went to public school. I made friends with a pair of siblings who were on the same track as me. There was another pair of siblings who were on track D. There were some other kids in the neighborhood, but they moved away and the kids who moved in after them left quickly too. I wasn't allowed to venture onto other streets, so I didn't meet any other kids from there.

My third grade class had a mythical being who visited the class called “the Birthday Fairy”. She would leave gifts for the students in the class. When the birthday fairy visited my class in early February, and left presents for the January recipients. The presents were delivered after lunch. My present was placed on my chair, and I accidentally sat on it. I received a Minnie ‘N’ Me paint by number set. It was a nice gift I was very into Minnie ‘N’ Me.  

Luckily it wasn't damaged. My class spent the whole year trying to figure out who it was. We were pretty sure it was the teacher. There were many clues like the class computer was broken, and so was the Birthday Fairy’s. Each message was typed and included a clipart picture of a fairy on them. Mine had a message about “missing” me because I had been on break. I think they were written on some type of Apple computer.

The school was so overcrowded in fourth grade my class was stuck with what was called “roving” When a class on another track left for a month my class would take the vacated classroom. We “roved” to three different classrooms. “Roving” was a track wide thing, so if one year track B was roving then track A would “rove” the next school year.

I remember in 1994 for my birthday I wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese. My dad took the day off work to take the family. There were no Chuck E. Cheeses near where I lived, and I missed the Pasadena location I used to go to which was a converted Showtime Pizza with the three stage set up. I ended up going to the one in Sun Valley. This location had one stage and the show was of Chuck E Cheese and his friends in a balcony! A balcony?! They were only half animatronics. We got weird looks for having a ten year old at a Chuck E. Cheese on a school day in the afternoon. I guess the schools in that area were not year round schools. Nobody told us anything though. The one good thing about that Chuck E. Cheese was that they had good prizes. I remember winning a necklace with a crayon charm. (I still have the charm)

When I finished the fourth grade in late June of 1994 my family was in the process of moving. When I met up with the other kids on the street they told me the school was looking for me. The school called my mom and told her to bring me to school. She told the school that I didn't need to go to school now because I was going to a school with a traditional schedule. I ended up getting part of a summer vacation that year.

I think going to year round school even if it was only for two years helped prepare me for college in a way. When I see the early school supplies for sale approximately after the Fourth of July how could I forget about people starting college in August? The lack of spring break doesn't bother me since a college I attended did not offer one since they start the semester in late February, and cram in a whole semester with no breaks.