RIVERSIDE

The idea of a four-day school week isn’t new, but the districts that have adopted such have been in a clear minority. However, with post-COVID changes in the workforce, in addition to other challenges, more and more districts are giving the four -day schedule serious consideration.

At Highland, Superintendent Ken Crawford believes this could be a fruitful change for the district. Late last year, he began having conversations to gauge interest and gather feedback.

“There’s a swelling around the state of having more conversations about it, and more schools really seriously saying, ‘We’re going to do this,’” he says. “I think it is the coming wave for smaller schools.”

Crawford is well-prepared to take Highland into four-day territory, should it be approved by the school board: he is concurrently superintendent at Waco Community Schools in Wayland, a district that has maintained a four-day calendar since 2013. With a decade of experience, Waco is often looked to for guidance by other districts interested in following their model.

The uptick in interest in Waco prompted administrators at Highland to ask if they should be talking about the four-day week as well.

“When we got back after Thanksgiving, that’s when I talked to both high school and elementary staffs, and there was interest there, there was a lot of positive feedback right away,” Crawford said.

He then talked with the union, custodial staff, food service staff, bus drivers, nurse, and business manager, asking them what they thought of the idea, and how it might affect their jobs. After Christmas, he and the business manager looked at how the change would affect financing. Now, starting on Jan. 6, he’s started holding a series of four meetings with parents.

By the school board’s late January work session, Crawford hopes to have enough information gathered so that the board can make an educated decision about implementing a four-day school calendar starting in the fall with the 2024-2025 school year.

How a four-day week works

Should the four-day week gain board approval, school days would be Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., about 50 minutes longer than currently, with no early outs. Instructional time would fall between 1,092 and 1,114 hours, meeting the state-required 1,080 hours of instruction.

Teachers would continue to meet on most Friday mornings for professional development and prep time.

Primary concerns

As many parents and guardians work during the week, an initial concern about a four-day school week would be what might be done about providing supervision for kids on Fridays when they aren’t in school. Crawford dealt with this issue at Waco, and he thinks Highland might handle it the same way: expand the before and after school program to include Fridays, perhaps by hiring high school kids to help out.

However, at Waco, they found that by the end of the first year, the day care issue “kind of faded away, because parents found grandparents, or they found an older sibling, or they found a family friend, or had a high school [aged] babysitter step in. They found alternative ways for that,” Crawford says.

“That’s the hard thing,” he says. “We will have to transition through that.”

Having as much notice as possible – about six or seven months before the calendar would be implemented in the new school year – will likely help ease the switch.

An additional day without school-provided food might also be a concern for families. To address this, Crawford talked with Highland’s backpack program, and the district would also find ways to keep the food pantry stocked.

“I feel between the backpack program and the pantries, we should be able to figure that out and manage that as necessary,” he says.

Primary benefits

You might be wondering, why mess with the typical school week? What benefits from dropping Friday classes could possibly be worth the pain of adjustment? Is this about money?

“There will be minimal cost savings,” Crawford says. At Waco, the savings on utilities, bussing, and salaries is just “a little bit,” perhaps equivalent to a single teacher’s salary. This is not a money-saving strategy.

The four-day school week for Highland is about the district wanting to do the best it can for teachers and students.

“We’re doing this more for teacher retention and recruitment. And we’re doing this more for the mental health of the students and the staff,” Crawford says. “When we have better teachers recruited, better teachers staying and staying longer, that helps our kids.”

Finding and keeping teachers has been a challenge for most school districts of late, but for districts with four-day weeks, this is less of a problem. Crawford has seen this himself at Waco and Highland: when Waco posts a job opening, they have several applicants; when Highland posts an opening, they receive fewer.

The four-day week is a draw for teachers, especially post-COVID, as working from home and hybrid schedules are more common across many occupations. Teachers without Friday classes enjoy the flexibility to schedule appointments or leave for a long weekend if they so desire.

With more attentive teachers during the week, and having received more rest over the weekend, students might see improvements in their performance. At Waco, test scores and performance profiles remained constant even though students lost a day in the classroom.

The shorter school week may also attract more students through open enrollment; one district that made the change saw their open enrollment in numbers jump by 100 students.

Expectations

Although the response to a four-day week at Highland has been “overwhelmingly positive,” should the school board approve the calendar for 2024-2025, Crawford anticipates a little roughness for the first year.

“That first year will just be bumpy because no one’s used to it,” he says. Everyone will have to get up a little bit earlier, and that will take some adjustment. “I get that will be stressful,” he says. “Hopefully we can transition through that.”

The hope is that the challenges will be worth the reward.

Remaining meetings with parents are scheduled for Jan. 16 and 18. A set of four-day school week FAQs is available at highlandhuskies.org.