April 24, 1998

SUMMERTIME....WILL THE CAMPS BE HALF-EMPTY?

No more teachers. No more books. Or will it be no more summer?

Year-round schooling may be the dream of some educators, who think the traditional three-month summer break lets young, fertile brains lie fallow for too long. But for the nation's 8,500 summer camps, year-round schedules aren't an academic question. The $3 billion summer-camp business now faces a small, but potentially long-term threat from school systems eager to revamp their teaching schedules.

Over the past 10 years, pockets of public schools have been quietly converting to year-round schedules, typically splitting up what used to be summer vacation into evenly spaced intervals of three or four weeks off. Today, nearly 500 school districts in 38 states offer some form of year-round schooling, according to the National Association of Year-Round Education (NAYRE) in San Diego. The number of students enrolled in such programs has climbed 36% since the 1993-1994 school year, and now totals 1.93 million, according to NAYRE. "The age of the agrarian economy is gone," says Sally Stanley, principal of the soon-to-be-year-round Cresthill Middle School outside Denver. That's a reference to a bygone era, when a summer "vacation" made time for kids to work on the farm. She adds: "We're responding to modern times and not just turning kids loose for the summer."

Much to the dismay of camp operators, some of the largest school systems have begun to think the same way. In early April, the Chicago superintendent of schools said his system is "heading in the direction of year-round schools." Even New York City's schools chancellor proposed a five-school pilot program that would run on a nontraditional schedule.

"If New York schools changed their calendar, that could be devastating to a lot of camps," says Bob Briskin, director of Maine Teen Camp and publisher of Camp Management magazine. Although it was eventually defeated by teachers' groups and state legislators (with help from a camping lobbyist), the New York plan stands as a reminder that even the longest-standing customs aren't unassailable -- and that even businesses as tradition-bound as summer camps must sometimes change with the times.

Not that the camp industry is suffering yet. In fact, summer-camp enrollments are booming, having climbed at an annual 10% clip over the past six years, according to the American Camping Assn. Some 8.1 million school-age children now fill the nation's summer camps -- 75% of which are operated by nonprofit church and community groups, with the rest generally consisting of multigenerational family businesses. That popularity comes as no surprise to camp lovers, who claim the summer experience is just as valuable as any classroom learning. "Camp helps kids gain independence away from their parents," says Jeffrey Solomon, president of the National Camp Assn., a New York camp-referral group. "They provide an opportunity for them to develop confidence, make new friendships, and learn cooperation."

Few advocates of year-round education would disagree with such claims, says Kelly Johnson, NAYRE spokeswoman. Her group merely argues that a three-month summer lull wastes the time of students, who must scramble to relearn material each fall. And under most year-round arrangements, students are indeed given three to five weeks of vacation during the summer. That's enough time, says Johnson, for a child to fit in a three- or four-week camp session.

Still, that's a small window. Add in a family vacation, and perhaps a one-week sports clinic, and suddenly a 12-year-old has little time for Camp Sleepaway. For an industry at the mercy of school schedules, that's a scary scenario.

"It concerns me, and I know that more schools are trying to plug in year-round" schedules, says Nancy Nighbert, director of River Way Ranch Camp in Sanger, Calif., which is near year-round school hotbeds in Las Vegas and the Los Angeles suburbs. "What if slowly but surely it all starts to turn that way? We'll have to come up with alternative programs." Nighbert estimates that less than 10 of her 791 campers last summer were affected by year-round school. But she wonders: "How many parents inquired but chose not to send them here [because of a schedule conflict]."

The effects of year-round school have had a bigger impact on Spencer Boyd, who has been in the business for 44 years and now runs boys and girls camps in western North Carolina. Boyd signs up many of his campers from inside the state, as well as from Virginia. But now, he says, "Virginia schools are getting out later and later, and North Carolina schools going back earlier and earlier." That means he has upped his recruiting at private schools, which generally stick to a traditional academic year. That worries Boyd: He's afraid camp will simply become another exclusive spoil of the rich. "It's not that we don't want public school kids," says Boyd, "but if they can't come, we can't recruit them."

Year-round proponents argue that camp needn't be a summer-only offering and that camp operators should adapt their programs to fit students' schedules. Boyd, for one, is winterizing his main mess hall and horse stables for off-season conferences. He estimates, however, it would cost $500,000 to convert all of his facilities. What's more, he laments, there is "just something quaint about having a hole in the floor" -- a summertime feature you "can't have in the winterized business."

For now, camp directors say the relatively small number of year-round students poses no huge threat to their summer ritual. "It's not at the forefront of people's minds," adds Briskin. One camp broker, New Hampshire-based Walter Brent, even thinks reshuffled school schedules could help extend the camp season into early and mid-September. But as educators, parents, and students begin to consider -- and sometimes accept -- the new school guidelines, efficiently coordinating a hodgepodge of schedules won't be easy.

For camp directors, all this might call to mind a teary-eyed campfire finale: "We'll meet again next year. By then, will we be the same?"

By Dennis Berman, Staff Reporter, Business Week Online