SMITHFIELD — Last Wednesday marked the first day of a new year-round schedule for West Smithfield and South Smithfield elementary schools. This was news to fifth-grader Russell Holder.

“I didn’t know until yesterday,” Holder, a West Smithfield student, said on the first day of class. “I thought it was August.”

He was mad at first, but a little television time calmed him down. By the time Wednesday afternoon rolled around, Holder didn’t seem to mind a bit that his summer of basketball and relaxation was cut off early.

Natalie Corbett and her sister Lindsey, both fourth-graders, were downright excited to come back.

“I’m glad I can see my friends again,” said Natalie, who spent her summer swimming and reading.

The new schedules were a point of debate during the last few months of the school year. The Board of Education had wanted to include Selma Elementary in the schedule but dropped the school when a survey showed staff and parents were evenly split on the issue.

Some board members have cast the schedule as a way to boost test scores.

“This is an underlying motive for us to give our schools that have high poverty or some challenges in meeting the needs of our students more opportunities of time and resources,” then-Superintendent Anthony Parker said earlier this year as the school system debated the new calendar.

Under the calendar, students will have one-week breaks in October, January and March, as well as a six-week summer break. During each break, students can return to school for help getting ahead or catching up in their studies.

“This calendar allows us to give more frequent but shorter breaks,” said West Smithfield Principal Chad Jewett. “It’s not so long of a break that they regress.”

Jewett said second-graders can take nine weeks to get back to their end-of-year reading levels after a long summer break. The principal hopes the new calendar will strengthen the gains the school has made in recent years.

Last school year’s science scores were up 42.4 percent, reading was up 14.2 percent, and math was up 11.4 percent at West Smithfield, where Jewett has been principal for two years. The improvement was enough to earn a “school of progress” label.

“We just did a remarkable job,” he said.

The first day of the new calendar did have a few bumps. About 60 of the school’s 570 students were missing in action, twice the normal for opening day.

“We gotta beat the bushes,” Haywood Watson joked as he stuck his head into Jewett’s office.

Deanna Fairclough, a fourth-grade teacher, said she didn’t mind the shift in schedule. “The last month of summer kind of drags,” she said.

Her family played its last T-ball game the night before. “It hasn’t really hit me that it’s July,” she said.