May 20, 2009 11:01 pm US/Central
What Works, Doesn't With 4-Day School Week
CLARA CITY, Minn. (WCCO) ―
-
-
While most students' dream of a shorter school week, this year students in the MACCRAY school district lived it. The high school principal came up with the idea five years ago and at the time, it wasn't well-received.
CBS
In an effort to save teachers' jobs, a Minnesota school district tried something creative this year. The MACCRAY School District in western Minnesota went to 4-day school weeks to save money on transportation and energy. So with this shortened week, what works and what doesn't work?
While most students' dream of a shorter school week, this year students in the MACCRAY school district lived it. The high school principal came up with the idea five years ago and at the time, it wasn't well-received.
However, as the school budget got tighter, the idea looked better.
"The original proposal projected that we would save between $85,000 and $100,000," said MACCRAY Superintendent Greg Schmidt.
That was enough to get the school board's OK, and the go-ahead from the state education department.
So last fall all 700 students in the towns of Maynard, Clara City and Raymond began a Tuesday through Friday school week. An extra 65 minutes of class time were tacked on to the days students were in school to make up for Monday.
"At first, I do have to say my husband and I were a little against it just with day care purposes," said parent Megan Struxness.
Struxness' son Dalton is a fourth-grader so she had her doubts. But once the day care issues were resolved her family gave it a passing grade.
"The family time has been very precious to us. Because you try to get him to bed at an earlier time and that Monday having off is kind of nice," said Struxness.
It worked for parents with high school students too.
"The doctor visits, orthodontist, college visits, anything we needed we tried to schedule for Mondays," said parent Michelle Trulock.
"Mondays were good for piano, guitar, all the extra things that were harder to fit in when there were 5 days," said parent Jennifer Dirksen.
The 4-day week hasn't worked for everyone. Some parents said their children would rather be in school with their friends, and finding things for them to do on Monday was hard.
Others did struggle with day care. And then there was the issue of procrastination.
"The only thing I don't like is sometimes I get lazy and I push my homework until Monday and then I rush on Monday nights to get it done," said eighth-grader Cole Sabe.
But, by doing this, school leaders say they kept teachers employed.
"It saved some teaching jobs. We would have cut another two positions last year had we not done this," said Schmidt.
The biggest concern in this experiment was student performance. The district says it won't know until next month if one fewer school day affected grades.
But students say their grades actually improved because classes were longer.
"If anything, they were better than they have been other years," said one student
"Psychology went up, English went up, math went up," said high school junior Alicia Koenen.
Schmidt said it isn't a cure-all -- it doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it less of a problem. But he expects other districts to follow suit.
"I would recommend it, certainly looking at it. It does save programs or teachers and I don't know why you would necessarily assume that you needed to cut a teacher before you talk with your community about the possibility of doing this first," he said.
In all, MACCRAY cut 23 days off its calendar this year. School leaders said they'll be doing the 4-day week again next year. Blackduck, Ogilvie and Warroad school districts are also going to shortened weeks.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Reporting
