According to the PR and KIDK (Ch. 3), “District 93 is looking at making the switch to 4 day school weeks because it needs to trim its budget. So far, the district is estimating it would save around $1M to $1.5M.” (http://www.kidk.com/news/39476397.html)
To assist fellow IFT readers, I visited http://www3.d93.k12.id.us/ in an attempt to provide official details concerning the proposal. Unfortunately, no details are posted as of yet and the secretary at the administration office did not have any news to offer. The only thing I could scratch up is that there should be something posted by Monday – so stayed tuned.
If the primary reason for SD.93 proposing this option is to save money on energy costs, perhaps they can follow Bonneville SD.91’s lead. (Congratulations to SD.91 for being honored as one of the top five school districts in the US for energy savings.)
However, assuming energy savings will not be enough to trim down the budget, how else can reducing the number of weekly schools days save money? One big way is busing. By reducing the number of days required to bus children to school, you can almost reduce the district’s transportation budget by 20%. (The main problem for the district here though is that most of the district’s transportation budget is state funded.)
Another area for savings is the support staff. By reducing the number of school days per week, the district would save on wages paid to bus drivers, custodians, clerical staff, food service workers, resource officers, and so on. In fact, this would reduce the number of hours worked by many support staff, possibly causing them to fall beneath the required number of hours to qualify for benefits – saving wages and benefit related costs like health insurance.
That being said, I actually like and support the proposal of a four-day school week. In fact, I would support a four-day workweek for most businesses and all non-essential government workers. Could you imagine being able to call or visit a government agency when it was more convenient for you – the taxpayer? As the system now works, they work the same or fewer hours as most of us, and take similar breaks and time off. This means, the only real time that we have to call or visit government offices is during our off hours, and guess what – that’s when they are not there. That is the government’s customer service at its best. (Sorry about carrying on.) More importantly though, could you imagine having an extra day off on a weekly basis? An extra day to spend more time with your family and those you love? Could you imagine how having an additional day off each week could possibly help the economy?
However, the detractors will have their complaints. One complaint may be the reduction in wages to employees who cannot afford the reduction. My response, what about the people who have to foot the bill to keep that person employed? What about the burdens the taxpayers shoulder in trying to keep themselves afloat?
Another possible complaint may be in defense of the children. What will happen to the children now that they have an additional day off? Who will care for them? What will they do? My response, I did not know that one of the roles of the education system was to serve as chief baby-sitter and nanny.
Another concern might be the academics, now that is a valid concern in my book. I have seen studies in both directions concerning an increased school day. I have heard many arguments concerning the pros and cons for lengthening the amount of instruction time within a given 24-hour period – and for now, I believe the jury is still out on this one.
The last and final concern, which day of the week will be cut. I would support Friday as the day off, simply because it makes more sense for families and productivity of the student. SD.93 supports Mondays, sighting extra-curricular activities, use of facilities, and utilities savings. That’s garbage to me, since either way it goes (and as I see it), the lights will be on for the same number of hours. Plus, this concern primarily affects the High School facilities. The only hours the lights will be off will be during the normal academic instruction time on the chosen day, whether it be Monday or Friday.
What are your thoughts?
Popularity: 13%
Related posts:
- Update: School District 93 no longer considering a 4-day school week, instead plans to explore other budget and program cuts. Meetings scheduled for next week.
- Meetings planned to discuss Idaho Falls School District 91 bond proposal
- What about School District 91’s upcoming request for $85 million?
- School district bans cell phones
- Where is District 91 School Board Leadership?
Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Id be looking to move outside of district 93’s boundries… studies show people learn best with spaced repetition…. take away a day a week, and you’re really going to turn idaho falls into a “hick” town.
Well written article Mr. Plumber. I think you have approached it from all directions. Personally, I am in favor of a 4-day school week. I think Friday would be the best day off since many parents (i.e., Site workers) have Friday off. When we first got Fridays off at the Site, it was like a mini-vacation every week — I loved it.
My first response to the concern about the kids having an unsupervised day, was what do they do in the summer?
As long as the student’s education is not compromised, then I am definitely in support of this change. From what I have read about some of the other school districts that have gone this route is that to date they have seen no significant change in the learning patterns. Of course in this part of the country, it is still early days, and only time will tell. But a study of this magnitude would probably take several years. The article that I was reading about a 4-day school week said that attendance was up and learning also seemed to be up. The parents could set aside part of the extra day for the children to work on school work, read, or do “school” things if they were concerned about the break in “schooling”. It’s not that hard to do.
In a lot of cases, the older students could spend more time at their jobs.
I support the shorter school week, but not because it eliminates any amount of school expenses. Give the kids more time to be kids while they can be.
I just caught the tail end of the Neal Larson show today. He had the super for SD.93 on the show talking about the 4-day school week.
Did anyone else catch the program? I hope I can find a podcast for th show later.
I have mixed feelings on this one. I know all school districts are being faced with budget problems and the solutions won’t pleasing no matter what.
Having Monday be the day will be very inconvenient. I can understand their rational for Fridays, but this will be very inconvenient for families.
Plus now families will be faced with finding daycare for a single day a week. Can local day cares handle this single day demand?
Make it Friday and at least a portion of the parents will potentially have the day off too.
And when will students have time for after school activities, jobs, recreation with longer school days?
I’m Not Surprised by your post, Mr. Plumber. Sadly.
You said: “However, the detractors will have their complaints. One complaint may be the reduction in wages to employees who cannot afford the reduction. My response, what about the people who have to foot the bill to keep that person employed? What about the burdens the taxpayers shoulder in trying to keep themselves afloat?
According to your logic, Mr. Plumber, we surely don’t need any of those pesky people who are employed by the government or government contractors. Those dang INL workers, police officers, prosecuters, all those folks who works in prisons & jails, fire fighters, elected officals (in Idaho, most of which have an “R” behind their name)…. who needs ‘em? To use your words “what about the people who have to foot the bill to keep employed? Gosh darn it, I’m really sick of my hard-earned tax dollars paying their wages. I say let’s just get rid of the whole lot of ‘em! And while were at it, we don’t need no more stinkin’ roads, bridges, sewer plants, water systems or none of that there junk! We lived without it for years, we can do it again.
And teachers! Why they’re the worst of the bunch. Suckin’ up all our tax dollars and only acting like gloried day care people. Nevermind that the U.S. education system has dropped to # 18 when compared to other industrialized nations. Why do we need an educated society? Why would we want to compete in a global economy? Let’s just go back to the horse and buggy days. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Great logic there, Mr. Plumber.
I definitely agree with the daycare issue. It would be interesting to see how many younger kids would be going into daycare that one day a week.
I also wonder how it would affect other social dynamics if both districts don’t move to a 4 day week. I’m not talking only about kids and playdates, but other things that revolve around the school day.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
To Not Surprised (Comment #6). Don’t you think you went a little over the top in your response? I thought Mr. Plumber’s post was for the most part pretty well thought out. Let’s try to keep things in perspective here and not get radical.
It was over the top. That’s the whole point – it’s called satire and intended to show the flaws in the logic and the silliness of the argument.
JFlowers said: Id be looking to move outside of district 93’s boundries… studies show people learn best with spaced repetition…. take away a day a week, and you’re really going to turn idaho falls into a “hick” town.
If you knew anything about the area you would know Idaho falls is District 91. District 93 is outside of Idaho falls.
Anyone have any thoughts about what a 4 day week might do to the crime rate? Simple truth is that most crime is committed by males ages 16-24 and crime always spikes on Fridays and Saturdays in large part because kids don’t have school the next day and are out all night partying. If you give them another night off thats another night for them to create mayhem. More drinking, more cruising, more doing dumb teen vandalism, more vehicle burglaries, etc. The same thing happens in the summer when they are out of school too.
I can understand that having a four day school week will save the district money, but it will save them money at the parents expense. it will cost me an estimated $1000.00 a year more in daycare expenses for the one day a week. For me that is pretty significant.
Unfortunately, the fact that we are even having this discussion is probably an indicator of our society’s devaluation of the importance of education. We are doing our children and their children no favors by teaching them that education is less important by reducing their school days and increasing their distractions.
The U.S. is no longer the world leader in secondary education as we were 20 years ago. Cutting to a 4 day school week is a good way to send the message that we don’t care. This would give even more legitimacy to the “dumb American” stereotype we’ve been gradually earning over the past couple decades.
In fact, we are 18th out of the other nations examined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
When you are behind, you look at what the winners are doing when considering such a counter-intuitive change like reducing the school week. If they have a 4 day work week, then it’s worth taking a more seriously look at the proposal.
If the nations ranked above us do not have 4 day work week, then we should probably take a better look at our own motives for wanting such a thing. I doubt the primary motive is to improve the success of our educational system.
From http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/19/US_slipping_in_education_rankings/UPI-90221227104776/
“The seemingly downward trend of U.S. education worries economists.
“The United States has rested on its laurels way too long,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, told USA Today. “Other countries have increasingly caught up and surpassed the United States.”
“We’ve been asleep for a good number of years as a country,” says Richard Freeman, an economics professor at Harvard. “It’s not that we’re doing horrible. But the other guys are moving faster.”
Find me one educator that is teaching our kids that “education is less important”. I have 2 kids going to School Dist 93. I have been active with everything their school does. I go to their board meetings. I know many teachers that want to do what is best for the kids. They might be thinking of doing 4 days a week, but they are also looking into extending those 4 days a little longer to make up for missing Monday. They are not losing anything they are losing.
I am not sure how increasing their distraction has anything to do with this. If you can’t keep your kids off the streets or the ‘cruise” strip, that isn’t the schools fault. If we are going to go that route, then I am mad that the schools because I have to work on Saturdays so they should have school on Saturdays so I don’t have to pay out daycare.
If my car gets broke into on a Saturday, I am going to be mad at the schools because they could have had my kid in school that day. The schools do not babysit your kids.
Maybe parents need to step up and take care of their own kids instead of leaving it all to the schools. The schools educate and that is what they are doing. Keeping the same hours, but only doing 4 days a week. Talk about crime…..talk to the parents of the kids doing all the crime and causing problems on the weekends and the summer, not the schools problem.
Hi Emmie, I agree with you regarding that ideal. However, the reality is that there are a lot of parents who are either physically absent (both parents having to work, divorce, etc.) or
Dealing with the parents are a separate issue. The fact is that there are a lot of kids with crappy or non-existent parents out there where the difference between them growing up to be decent citizens (and not a drain on society) is the experience they have in school and how much time they spend there. It may feel easier in the short term to just ignore that, but it’s at the expense of longer term. It’s proven that education and time in school significantly reduces the crime rate and increases employability…I’d much rather keep our kids in school longer now, instead of wasting money paying for them to live off the State in prison later.
As for the message we’re sending, kids learn from what we do, not what we say. We can say we put education as a top priority all we want, but when we have less school days or hours than other countries that are getting better results, it sends a much more powerful message.
Similarly, one can say that there is nothing more important to them than finding a job, but if they only spend an hour a day looking for one, which is the more powerful message? How we choose to spend our time speaks much louder than chatter.
Again, I agree with you that in a perfect world, everyone would have two parents that are very interested in the education of their children. The reality is, that the less education people have, the more likely they are to be those poor parents that we complain about. Additionally, the less education someone has, they are less likely to be able to effectively convey the value of it to their children.
Emmie
You apparently want to treat the school like its in a vacuum with no effect on the outside world. The reality is that going to a 4 day week is going to have serious ramifications in many different areas, the crime thing I mentioned is just one of them. A serious issue like changing to a 4 day week shouldn’t be considered without considering all those ramifications. Throwing out gibberish like “talk to the parents of the kids doing all the crime” is great rhetoric but in the end its just rhetoric. I’m sure if the police had functional crystal balls to tell them which kids were going to commit crimes next Friday night they would do exactly what you suggest.
You’ve also got the daycare issue as many have mentioned. School basically is daycare whether educators want to admit that or not and taking away a school day means the parents who work must now find daycare on that 5th day now and this is going to put a burden on those families.
A 4 day week also means longer days for students. I was a very good student in school, graduating with a near 4.0, but even on my 5 day schedule by the end of the day I was tired and not learning much in the last class as my brain couldn’t take any more that day. I’m sure thats typical of most students and extending the day would just further diminish the value of any classes at the end of the day.
Sure there are positives in savings for the school but there are some serious potential negatives for the community that must also be considered. I live in District 91, not 93, so I won’t be affected regardless but if I had a say I’d vote emphatically against this.
If the schools in Idaho really want to save money then they should consider consolidating districts. There is no sane or logical reason why the Idaho Falls metro area needs two school districts. Nor any of the other bigger cities in Idaho that have multiple districts covering the same metro area. Consolidation would save tons of money thanks to a reduction in duplicate redundant staff. States like Nevada have only a handful of districts yet Idaho has hundreds. You would have a huge outcry from the teachers union as fewer superintendants and such means less chance for advancement but this is still where they should be looking first.
Thank you Emmie for pointing out that I need to step up and take care of my kids, your insight reminded me that there are some very nieve people out there that believe a good parent doesn’t think about how much money is being spent.
Our economy is in serious trouble and most people seem to cutting back to make ends meet. I am a college graduate and still barely make enough money to support my family. My work hours have been cut and I am doing everything I can to stay a float and make sure my kids have clean clothes on their backs, food in their bellies and a roof over their head. And now with the possibility of a four day school week, it means that even more money will be going out.
So Emmie, instead of lashing out at hard working citizens who are concerned about spending even more money they dont have, why dont you spend your time writing letters to those reponsible for short changing the education system.
excuse my spelling error, I meant “naive”
The general consensus on this blog and another popular local blog seems to be that we should be combining school districts. Does anyone know how that is accomplished? Does it need to be done at the state level, or can it be handled at a local level? Who needs to be contacted? In other words, from the nuts and bolts up, how is this done?
The ironic thing about the poster in comment 6’s intention to point out the flaws in logic by being satirical is that his own logic is actually a logical fallacy known as “slippery slope.” It’s one we’re all familiar with and some of us are prone to buying into it. That is, if A happens, it may lead to B, which may lead to C which may lead to D which may lead to the ‘end of the world’. In post 6’s case, the end of the world the commentator believes is implied in the original argument is that all government employees should be unemployed because the taxpayers have to bear the burden.
The funny thing is that this is not at all what Mr. Plumber is even remotely implying. Mr. Plumber very simply pointed out that there is a burden either way – the teachers would have to deal with making less, or in the status quo, the taxpayer pays more. (Truth be told, we won’t be paying less; our money will just be going to different ends.)
This is nothing like what poster in comment 6 is saying. Mr. Plumber is not saying that anyone is actually complaining about paying teachers (or anyone else). Mr. Plumber is not saying that anyone should stop paying government employees all together. Mr. Plumber is merely saying that someone has to pay, and that unfortunately it may be the teachers being cut by a day a week (note this is different from being cut entirely) in salary.
Whether I agree on the issue or not, “great logic, there,” Not Surprised.
Idaho Native (and others) – Yes, school district consolidation is a topic of interest. I have long felt that all school districts within Bonneville County should consolidate. Since this issue is an item of interest, I have contacted the State Department of Education and am awaiting the details. I can tell you the last I seriously discussed this topic with others, Idaho had more school districts than Colorado, and maybe even Washington State.
As for now, I believe that consolidation would require the issue to be presented to the public for a vote. In theory, one district would serve as the dominate SD and the other would be annexed – uniting the boundaries.
I will post my findings and my input as a new post under something along the lines of school district consolidation – stay tuned.
I’ll be interested in hearing the reply you get Joe Plumber. There’s got to be other districts around the state who have consolidated at one time or another. They’d be good ones to “interview” on what they learned, the do’s and don’t’s, etc. My kids aren’t in public school yet, but the issues are something we need to pay attention to. Education is going to be cut more, and we have to start thinking outside the box for solutions.
I agree with combining the districts. The negative implications, it seems, would affect a much smaller group of people.
I haven’t had to pay for daycare for quite some time, and I’m shocked at what it costs now. Daycare is always a consideration, even in deciding whether to take a job. If you don’t make enough money to pay daycare and your bills, then you need to pay for another 4 days a month, that may be enough for some people to simply quit work and go back on aid, it’s that expensive.
There goes the money that the government is saving by dropping that one day.
Don’t know if you’ve read this concerning consolidating Idaho districts:
http://www.kpvi.com/Global/story.asp?S=9913061
The only people that get cut in pay by going to a 4 day week is the lower end people like Bus drivers, Janitors, Food services some office staff you know the people who work by the hour. Everyone else like Administration, Principals, Teachers they are on salaries set be the state so they get paid the same. Difference they get paid for 5 days work 4 and get a 3 day weekend ever week
I WANT TO BE A TEACHER
See the new post dated March 4, 2009: http://www.idahofallstoday.com/2009/03/04/update-school-district-93-no-longer-considering-a-4-day-school-week-instead-plans-to-explore-other-budget-and-program-cuts-meeting-scheduled-for-next-week/
I also support the four day work week. Other school districts that have 4 day work weeks seem to be coping just fine. I think that Monday would be better than Friday as schools (hgh schools) would still need to run buses fro athletic events. As for the person who wants to be a teacher, go for it, it is not as easy as it looks and if you are first year teacher with a masters degree you make a whopping $31,000 and there is no paid vacation. There are a lot of pros and cons on this subject.