Four-Day Week?

I have had many bloggers ask me if the school district has considered a four-day week. The answer is yes, some board members have expressed interest and some employees have expressed interest. We must think very carefully about the impact of this before we seriously consider it. The State Board of Education passed a rule last year stating that school systems had to have school the equivalent of 180 days. This means that you don't have to go 180 days but you must go the same number of hours. This frees local school districts to be more flexible with their calendars. Peach County and Murray County have lengthened their school day and trimmed some days off of their 180 day calendar. Yes, this saves a lot of money as far as transportation costs and operating costs in the district, but where does it create expenses?! It creates child-care expenses for the families. In the case of Muscogee County, there are 32,000 children and thousands of these are under the age of 12. Most of their mothers and daddys and guardians work. The burden of day-care expenses for these children would be difficult for many of these families. The other issue to think about is how productive would we be in that last hour of school if we extended the school day? Could five and six year olds continue to learn at high levels another hour a day? Would teachers have the energy to be creative and continue to engage students for one more hour? Many of the excellent teachers that I know are exhausted at the end of the current day.

A four-day week is certainly something to consider and if the current economic crisis continues to bring budget cuts, this solution may certainly be one that we study with interest. We need to think of all of the issues that surround it. It will be interesting to see how things work in Peach and Murray.