

	The Christian Academy of Knoxville has a great educational program. There are great, motivated students and even greater teachers. The administration leads well and also plans for the future. The purpose of the Christian Academy of Knoxville's educational system is to prepare students for college and adult life by providing a solid education and providing them with fundamental skills. The education at the Christian Academy of Knoxville is great, but there is one problem. Students forget much of what they learned the previous year when they return from summer break.
	Every year more than a quarter of the school year is used to review what was taught the previous year. Throughout a students elementary to high school career nearly three years is used to review material already taught. At the Christian Academy of Knoxville this is over twenty thousand dollars out of parents pockets wasted on review. In today's economy few parents afford to send their children to private school, but no parent can afford to lose this much money because their children forget information over the summer. Many statistics show that students forget nearly half of what they learn in a particular year. This can not be entirely attributed to the long summer break, but a large portion can. It is not a very good use of time to have to review every year from first through twelfth grade. The Christian Academy of Knoxville has a hard time fulfilling their goal of giving their students a solid education and preparing them for the future with this amount of waste. 
The Christian Academy of Knoxville needs to address this problem quickly and effectively. There are many ways that this problem could be fixed, but the most effective would be to split up summer break. This is not a proposition to abolish summer break or even substantially shorten it, but to break the customary summer break into several smaller breaks throughout the year. If added up, the smaller breaks will equal if not surpass the length of the standard summer break, which has slowly been shortened over the years. These smaller breaks would help to prevent students from forgetting information over the summer and would greatly reduce the time spent on review. The time saved would be able to be used to educate the students more than previously possible by creating new classes. If the school did not wish to change the current curriculum then the extra time could be used to shorten the school day to let the students have more rest in the morning, or could be used to create new preparatory classes. There may be students or parents that are not supportive of the new plan, but when explained fully, it is seen that there are not many adverse effects. Since the Christian Academy of Knoxville is a private school, it does not need to worry about getting approval from many leaders or the county school board. It also does not affect bus schedules and could get passed and implemented fairly quickly. 

