The 50-odd students of the tiny Olfen Independent School District in rural West Texas
are the first in the state to regularly have Fridays off. Like approximately
560 districts in more than 20 states,
Olfen has transitioned to a four-day school week. Most of these
districts are like Olfen: rural and thus serving students spread out
over a large geographic area. But some urban or suburban districts have
also switched to a four-day calendar. For instance, the 18,000-student
27J School District, located in the Denver metro area, went to a
four-day week this school year.
Four-day weeks are nothing new, according to
NEPC Fellow Kathleen Gebhardt. As a member—and incoming chair—of the Board of Trustees of the non-profit
Rural School and Community Trust
(which aims to improve rural education), she has for years followed
discussions around the four-day calendar. Gebhardt is also
President-elect of the Colorado Association of School Boards, serving a
state where at least
87 school districts have made this change.
“In my conversations with
some of the rural districts that have four-day weeks, I have learned
that some have been doing it for many years,” Gebhardt said. In fact,
the first three school districts to move to the four-day calendar in the
state did so 38 years ago,
in 1980.
Gebhardt noted that districts have made the shift for different reasons.
Some, she said, adopt the four-day week to save money. However, a 2011
analysis
by the non-profit, non-partisan Education Commission of the States
suggests that cost savings may be minimal. The six districts studied
saved between .4% and 2.5% of their budgets by tweaking their
calendars.
Colorado’s 27J adopted the four-day week
to save money
after a $12 million mill levy override failed. The district expects the
change to save $1 million annually, which is equivalent to less than
one percent of its budget.
Gebhardt says there’s an
even more important reason that districts adopt four-day weeks: “Many
are doing it to attract and retain teachers.” A 2018 study published in
the peer-reviewed
Journal of Education and Training Studies
did not directly address recruitment and retention. But it did find
four-day weeks were associated with better morale for both classified
and certified staff.
Meanwhile, the Olfen
District in Texas adopted the four-day week in order to offer students a
non-required fifth day of tutoring and enrichment in an effort to
improve student achievement.
“We think this is going to
be something great for our students and something that can also benefit
a lot of parents out there,” said Olfen Superintendent Gabriel Zamora
told the Texas Tribune.
“I just saw the possibility, once the law was passed and everything. I
never thought I would be in the district that had the right
circumstances.”
A 2015 article published in
Education Finance and Policy,
a peer-reviewed journal, studied test scores for elementary school
students in Colorado and found “little evidence that moving to a
four-day week compromises student academic achievement.” In fact, the
results showed a generally positive relationship between four-day school
weeks and “the percentage of students scoring at the proficient or
advanced levels on math and reading achievement tests.”
It’s less clear how four-day weeks impact equity.
“Equity is an important
question, and not one that I think anyone, that I know of, has
investigated,” Gebhardt said. “Anecdotally, I am hearing this has a big
impact on recruitment and retention, because many teachers like four-day
weeks.”
Another equity-related concern involves students with disabilities.
“I do worry about the
impact on special education students and how districts write their IEPs
(Individualized Education Programs) to accommodate these…when highly
impacted students might need care five days a week,” Gebhardt said.
If concerns do arise, it
is important to address them before the four-day week is adopted: In
Gebhardt’s experience, once they adopt the four-day week, districts
rarely return to a five-day calendar.
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