At a school board meeting on Nov. 18, Communications Coordinator Andrew Fernandez presented the results of a survey sent to parents, students, staff and community members at the beginning of November measuring interest in a four-day school week.
Zooming in
Fernandez said the survey received over 5,300 responses, and nearly 85% of participants indicated support for a four-day school week if childcare is offered on the fifth day. About 75% of respondents said they would prefer to have Friday off.
If moved to a 4-day school week, of the 3,300 parents who responded to the survey, 72.1% said no childcare would be needed on the additional day off.
Fernandez said the district is in the “very early stages” of implementing a four-day school week, but they wanted to engage the community and see how they felt about the potential change.
Some of the questions SMCISD staff are looking into is how the academic performance of other districts that have adopted a four-day school week has been impacted, child nutrition, transportation and potential options for childcare provided on the additional day off, Fernandez said.
Fernandez said they are not sure if they will have enough time to implement the change in time for the 2025-26 school year, but are in discussions with other districts who have adopted the change to see how long it took them to implement the four-day week.
“The first thing we want to share with our staff is they will see no pay decrease,” Fernandez said. “This is not a cost-saving opportunity where we're going to cut hours or cut staff in any way, that's not what we're looking at at all.”
Board Vice President Clementine Cantu was concerned with how the change may impact hourly employees, but Fernandez said they are considering different models other districts have implemented like having Fridays be planning days for teachers to prepare for the following week.
To help offset the instructional hours, Fernandez said the district is exploring adding an additional 30 minutes to every school day broken down by 15 minutes before and after school.
What they're saying
Board trustee Miguel Arredondo said he has “never been more vehemently against a proposal” that has come before the district, and he “can’t even fathom” voting in favor of the initiative.
“Quite frankly, I don't think we're doing a good enough job today with the five-day week that we have to even consider going to four days,” Arredondo said. “And to think that we're going to spend staff time devising a child care program for however, X number of families is, quite frankly, in my opinion, a gross misuse of resources.”
Board President Anne Halsey said she is concerned about implementing the change in school days before anticipated changes coming from the Department of Education and the state legislature, the potential impact on academic scores and its cost-effectiveness for the district.
“I worry about what the research shows about academic scores when changes like this are made, I also really worry about the timing,” Halsey said.
Halsey said she is also concerned the extra downtime would give students more screen time, but she is open to discussing potential innovative solutions that allow teachers to have more time to plan lessons, educational programming options on the fifth day and a plan to offer meals to students who are food insecure.
Going forward
Fernandez said SMCISD staff is planning to conduct more research on the shortened school week and present their findings to the board for consideration at a future meeting.
