Interest in extending the school year to make more efficient use of school facilities has been long standing. The most popular method of extending the school year is the summer session. Although widely popular with administrators, teachers, parents, and students, the summer session suffers from the same limitation as other extended school year plans--it costs more to operate than the regular year alone. The Lexington, Kentucky, comprehensive summer session has increased school costs by about 17 percent. A similar program in Rochester, Minnesota, uses a fee-tuition plan to lower the costs to about an 11 percent increase. The Polk County, Florida, 35-day session that can accommodate 50 percent of the student population costs an additional 6 percent over the regular school year. A voluntary summer term program for 50 percent of the Oxford district student population is estimated to cost about 6.3 percent of the regular school budget. If nonpromoted students are required to attend the summer session and the cost of these students repeating a year is deducted from the cost of the summer session, the net cost of the summer session drops to 3.8 percent of the regular budget. (Author/IRT)