Many schools across the country have adopted the four-day school week. This is mostly because of teacher shortages and budgeting. Nevertheless, four-day school weeks bring up several possible complications. One of the potential issues is meeting the required instruction hours: the hours that people are teaching. However, there are also advantages; one of these advantages is that it could save the school money. This would likely decrease the tuition of Seabury and other private schools which could open more people to attend.
Kansas state law requires private schools to “offer instruction for a period of time that is ‘substantially equivalent’ to the period of time public schools are open.” That is 1,116 hours for grades first through 11th and 1,086 hours for grade 12 per year. This means that by having a four-day school week you would have to increase time in the school day. This would have an effect on student athletics and extracurricular activities in a negative way. For example, students with extracurricular activities would have less time to do homework, which could decrease test scores. Recent research generally shows that schools with a four-day school week have small drops in student achievement.
A four-day school week significantly increases teacher enrollment in many schools that have made the switch. It also is estimated that schools save 1-2% of their budget by shortening the school week. This doesn’t sound like much, but it is actually significantly less money. This money could then be used to pay teachers or to decrease tuition––both of which would have a major impact on the school.
Overall, in my opinion, Seabury should not switch to a four-day school week at least until the city of Lawrence possibly makes this change, which the school board is considering: “The committee suggested the board explore it for future years, especially because of the extra plan[ing] time it would give teachers.” There is not enough research to consider this change for sure, and small drops in student achievement are definitely something important to keep in mind. Switching to a four-day school week is something that should be thoroughly thought out before switching without a good grasp of the possible consequences.
