By Elisabeth Palacios

More and more school districts across the U.S. have been implementing four-day school weeks and three-day weekends. This could be great for teachers and students, as they’d have less stress, be given more leisure time, and be able to have a better work-life balance. However, what are the other consequences of students having less educational time during a standard week? Will the effects be apparent, or is the fifth day of the school week not crucial for students to succeed academically? 

Over 1,600 schools across twenty-four states have switched to four-day school weeks in 2021 alone. The main reasons for the new schedule are to attract more teachers to work (since there is still a national teacher shortage) and to save costs due to limited budgets. Mineral Wells ISD, an independent school district in Texas, made the switch for the 2022-23 school year. Superintendent John Kuhn described it as a “really good success,” as one of the biggest benefits was a large increase in the number of teachers who applied to work in the district, eliminating the problem they had of a significant lack of teachers. 

Although there is positive feedback from school districts throughout the country, like students having better attendance and reducing their stress, there are some anticipated drawbacks. Across all the school districts that have this schedule in place, academic performance in math and reading has decreased. However, this is specifically in schools that have a reduced learning time overall. Schools that have made the days longer and added more days altogether to make up for the lost days each week noticed only a minor decrease in their student’s academic performance or none at all. 

Regardless of the benefits and downfalls of a four-day school week for students, they weren’t the reason why school districts wanted a shorter school week. Over the past five years, there has been a teacher shortage across the country and this was a solution school districts came up with.

Although this change was effective and more teachers applied to districts with four-day school weeks, there still hasn’t been a significant change in how teachers are paid and how they are treated. To increase teacher wages and meet the needs they’re asking for is a better approach. One day off each week, although it can be great, does not compensate for the lack of pay and the immense amount of burnout teachers get. It alone cannot make all the other problems teachers have with their job dissipate. These school districts are putting a bandaid over an open wound, and they need to start truly advocating for their teachers. 

With four-day school weeks becoming more popular, and school districts in Pennsylvania starting to consider making the switch, what does it mean for McCaskey if we implemented a four-day week and how would it be received? I interviewed a McCaskey sophomore, Angeline Palomeno, about why she thinks a four-day school week would be great for the student body as a whole. “School makes me feel like it is my number one priority instead of focusing on my personal life. If the four-day week of school was applied, I think that it would benefit many students.” The workload we get as students can be very overwhelming at times, and it’s hard to keep up once you fall behind and keep getting new work. With a four-day school week and a three-day weekend, students would have more time to make up work. Just one more day at home could make a large difference. “Our education is important but the increase of bad mental health makes me realize that we need to have more time to focus on ourselves and our personal life.” 

It’s expected for most students to love the idea, but what about teachers? Kimberly Walls, a long-time teacher at McCaskey, was asked about her thoughts on the four-day school week being implemented across the country.

Overall, she is very open to the idea and would love for it to be possible, but there are a lot of factors that would have to be adjusted in order for a four-day school week to work for our district. She discussed her experience with teaching summer school, which already runs on a 4 day-week schedule. “Students love it, teachers love it, administration seems to like it because you show up, you have four days, and then you have a three-day weekend. It’s a really nice experience that way… There doesn’t seem to be as much burnout.” 

However, she expressed her concerns about how many more school weeks we would need to meet the state minimum of school days necessary, which is 180 days. That would be nine more weeks, which would cut into a lot of summer vacation. In fact, less than a month would be left.

This poses a problem for students who rely on summer jobs to help their families or earn money for college, as well as students who would need to attend summer school. Walls did have a potential remedy for this, however. If our school district was ever seriously considering doing this change, she would “like a four-day in-person and one-day asynchronous [schedule]. Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, teachers would provide asynchronous instruction. Students would have to log in and that counts as a school day.” 

Even if the last day of the school week was asynchronous, the benefits of a four-day school week could still be reaped since students would still be at home.  Doing work asynchronously can be great for some students who love working independently at their own pace, and confusing for others who prefer the guidance of a teacher available to them in a classroom environment.  

Additionally, Walls had some questions about families who rely on child care and students who rely on free lunch. For the district to solve both problems, they’d have to provide or pay for child care, as well as food, on the fifth day of each week for families who need it. That’s when the switch would start to be costly, and it’s possible the district would be better off just leaving the five-day week in place.  

Overall, with some accommodations, four-day school weeks could benefit teachers and students at McCaskey. They seem to be going well in other school districts, although there are still downsides and it is hard to decipher whether or not this would actually be better than the standard five-day school week.