Four day school weeks – are they even possible?

Think of this, it’s a Friday morning and your alarm doesn’t ring, you’re allowed to sleep in and don’t have school. Your mom doesn’t pressure you to wake up, and you have the whole day to kill. You could do some extra homework, you could play video games, or you could even sleep some more. Maybe this should always be the case. Maybe four day school weeks could be implemented in our school system. 

We could be more productive and have so much more work done because we would have more time to be able to do our homework. This could lead to us getting more work done because we would have 3 days over the weekend for us to catch up and finish the work that teachers gave us. Even if we are done, or usually finish fast, it gives us time to make it better because there is a whole extra 24 hours before we need to turn it in.

Teachers would also have more time to plan and grade   assignments. We know that we have had a lot of stress when grades come out, and teachers feel very pressured and stressed out by students to get grades in, and this leads to a lot of mistakes in grading. There would also be more time to plan more things because they have an extra “teacher workday” or just extra planning days to keep assignments more organized and for them to have the most effective shorter assignments.                   

It helps the schools that are struggling a little more with     money, or just schools that want to save a little money. Schools can save a lot more money because they don’t have to pay for lunches and bus drivers for as much time.The ECS found that districts using shortened weeks, trimmed on average 0.4 percent to 2.5 percent off their budgets. This can be given to teachers to increase their salary and have them get more money because of how hard they work to help our kids learn and grow as people and lead to a better community.  

This is already tried and tested. The total number of districts adopting the four-day schedule has increased more than 30%, from 650 in 2020 to 850 now, according to EdSource.org. Many states have switched over to having four days in a school week. An example of a county that has done this is North College Hill City School District in Ohio. It has become the first state to do this. Maybe we should all adapt to have this kind of schedule?

Five day school means that we have less days to learn each week right? Well, we could just add some more weeks to school and balance it out. Either way we also have 1-2 four day school weeks in a month, and we still stay on track with our learning, it won’t hurt to make that permanent. Maybe if there is a holiday anyway on Thursday, you could have school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday to balance that out. According to edweek.org, no significant differences in academic achievement between districts that used five-day schedules and those that used four-day schedules, as long as the districts with shorter weeks maintained a high or medium amount of instructional time for students. For all of these reasons, a four day school week could be beneficial not just for us, but for everyone all across the country