Districts trying on four-day schedule
Schools see pros in making switch
England School District is going to do it. Ozark Mountain School District is, too. And the Kirby School District already did it — put into operation a four-day school week.
“I’m done with Mondays,” Kerry Saylors, superintendent of the Ozark Mountain School District, declared about his district’s plan to move next school year from the traditional five-days-a-week to a Tuesday-through-Friday schedule, with school days that will start at 7:50 a.m. and end at 4:15 p.m.
The England School District and other districts — such as East End headquartered in Bigelow in Perry County, Viola in Fulton County, Norfork in Baxter County, Western Yell County, Westside in Johnson County, and Cossatot River headquartered in Wickes — are among those in the state that have committed to a new kind of school week for the coming 2020-21 year. Still others are considering it.
Four-day school weeks have been rare but not unprecedented in Arkansas.
The once tiny Saratoga School District in Howard County — now part of the Mineral Springs School District — is one that tried the schedule in the past.
The Kirby School District in Pike County, along with two Pulaski County
area open-enrollment charter schools, are the only systems that operated a four-day week this school year. The charter schools — Goodwill Excel Center and Graduate Arkansas Charter High — are both “second chance for graduation” schools for older students.
Pike Palmer, superintendent of the traditional kindergarten-through-12th-grade Kirby district, is a champion of his district’s Monday-through-Thursday schedule. He said the schedule has helped attract teacher job applicants and students, buoyed the atmosphere in the district, and generated a little revenue and a bit of savings.
“The first couple of weeks were rough because we started 10 minutes early, at 7:50 a.m. and got out at 4:15,” Palmer said about last August. “We weren’t used to staying as long. But, after those first couple of weeks, everybody got into a groove, and we all said, ‘We’re off Friday; we have a three-day weekend.’ And then we came to that first Labor Day holiday, and we had a four-day weekend. After a while, our teachers and students …. said ‘we can’t even tell the difference that we are going longer.’”
The idea for the four-day week bubbled up from the district staff and community after learning of other districts in states such as Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri that had tried it. There was some early apprehension about it, Palmer said, because the Kirby district didn’t want the schedule to cause families to leave and the district have to repeat its recent history of falling under the 350-student state-set minimum for operating. The district had to petition the Arkansas Board of Education for waivers to remain open.
Kirby’s enrollment this school year was 384, up from 361 in 2018-19 and up from 336 in the 2016-17 school year.
District leaders did do a lot of research and surveying of employees and parents about the shift beforehand, Palmer said. And it cushioned the change by offering twice-a-month Friday morning enrichment and tutoring sessions for students. The sessions, bookended with breakfast and lunch, are staffed by a rotation of district personnel who are paid $30 an hour.
“It’s been a well-received initiative,” Palmer said, noting that employees and community members are agreeable to continuing with a three-year trial period.
A three-year span was expected to give the district the kind of data it needs to fully assess the short-week, longday schedule.
“The last thing I want to do is decrease our test scores or do anything that inhibit the learning of our students,” Palmer said.
The cancellation this spring of state-required ACT Aspire tests for students because of the coronavirus pandemic, Palmer said, was unanticipated and will affect the data collection.
Tyler Scott, superintendent of the 628-student England School District, has advertised the district’s newly adopted Tuesday-through-Friday school week as an enticement for students to make Arkansas School Choice Act transfers to his school system.
Like in Kirby, England’s school days will be longer to accommodate the shorter week. At the secondary level, in particular, the longer day will include a 45-minute period for academic intervention that is tailored to every student’s needs and will be scheduled in between the daily sixth- and seventh-class periods.
There will be afternoon snacks for the longer days, Scott promised.
On one Monday a month, England teachers will meet for professional development and subject-area planning, Scott said, calling that a benefit to the district. And there will still be time for students and employees alike to take care of medical and other personal matters on Mondays, reducing school day absences. That, he said, can lead to a reduction in substitute teacher pay costs, improved student achievement and better school letter grades from the state.
Superintendents interviewed about the four-day week said parents have raised questions at public forums and in surveys about the need for child care on the Monday or Friday that school is not in session. The superintendents said parents are able to find help from their families and community organizations — as shown by the fact that school buildings have been closed since mid-March because of the pandemic.
Palmer in Kirby said high school students and recent high school graduates have had child care lessons and may be available to babysit.
Scott in England said the longer school days mean students won’t be home by themselves after school, or not by themselves for very long. He also noted that several school holidays are on Mondays, including Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and the holiday for the presidents’ birthdays in February.
The superintendents also said budget cutting isn’t driving the schedule change.
“Money isn’t the first priority,” Scott said. “The first priority is the students, but we are going to save money because we won’t be running buses on that Monday, and our cafeteria is not working on that Monday now. “
Saylors, the superintendent of the 620-student Ozark Mountain School District in the Buffalo River region, said he has never promised that the change would be a money-saving measure, although he thinks that could happen.
“We more or less went at this as a way to help in attracting and keeping teachers,” he said. “And we thought it would help our declining enrollment.”
The Ozark Mountain district has three campuses, with each serving kindergarten through 12th grades: St. Joe, Bruno-Pyatt and Western Grove.
“We are trying to fashion ourselves as kid-friendly,” Saylors said. “Everything we have done here in the past year has been geared toward making the school environment more enjoyable for our students. I feel and I hope that a four-day week will be something that our students are going to enjoy.”