4 vs 5 Day School Week

As education’s budget cuts continue, school districts across the nation search for ways to save money, and one very promising option that they have discovered is the four-day school week. A school in New Mexico, during an energy crisis in the 1970’s, was the first to attempt this new type of school week in order to save energy and as of 2008 there were one hundred school districts that had adopted this perpetual three-day weekend (Work). It is mostly in small, rural communities where the kids have long commutes to and from school, and it is inefficient to have them attend school another day when they could just stay longer, and complete the same material Monday through Thursday (Work).
Schools looking to save energy and money investigate the four-day school week as a possible solution because although it probably would not use up less energy, it would certainly help in saving some money. One issue with saving energy is that on the fifth day, most schools would still remain open for sporting events, community gatherings, tutoring or other extracurricular activities (Work). The schools would save money on the wages of the cafeteria workers and bus drivers who were not needed on Fridays (Work). However, those people would be angry because that is how they make their living and take care of their families. Cutting salaries could negatively affect the standard of living for the area, making it less appealing to new families.
However, that extra day off does not negatively impact a student’s learning. In fact, performance and attendance by both teachers and students increases and allows for the decrease in the cost of a substitute teacher by seventy-five percent (Prann). Teachers want to be there for their kids, and if they miss a day, then they miss twenty percent more material per day, which especially in high school for those kids taking the AP tests is a big deal (Work). Kids would also be less likely to miss school because the amount of work they would have to