Four-Day School Weeks Begin this Fall in Four East Texas Districts
Recent polls conducted in area school districts showed an overwhelming majority of teachers, students, and parents believe it or not. This week area school boards went to work and voted on making it happen for real, and guess what, they did.
Early in the week De Kalb ISD, Malta ISD, and Pewitt CISD all voted to start the 4-day school week this coming fall. New Boston voted the measure in as well during their meeting Thursday.
The plan is to extend the current school day an extra 30 minutes and remove Fridays from the school calendars, academically speaking anyway, unless the following Monday is a school holiday. Extra-curricular activities would continue as normal, and plans are underway to come up with some childcare help for parents that need it on those Fridays.
Teachers will have to work every other Friday which can be used for grading and lesson planning, parent-teacher conferences, etc.
The big issue at hand is teacher burnout, schools in Texas and all over the country are trying to figure out ways to keep teachers in the classroom and not leave the profession altogether.
According to an article in USA Today, the teacher shortage is very serious with the National Education Association reporting 567,000 fewer educators since the pandemic began. Teacher retention has become a top priority for school districts all across the country.
If successful we could see a lot of smaller districts in Texas adopt this plan in the next few years. I'm sure the students are hoping so at least. Our Bowie County school districts that have jumped on board the 4-day school week bandwagon are joining the Jasper ISD which announced their plans to do the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
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