Four-Day School Week To Begin 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.

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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.

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Teachers will have to work every other Friday which can be used for grading and lesson planning, parent-teacher conferences, etc.

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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.

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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.

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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.

See How School Cafeteria Meals Have Changed Over the Past 100 Years

Using government and news reports, Stacker has traced the history of cafeteria meals from their inception to the present day, with data from news and government reports. Read on to see how various legal acts, food trends, and budget cuts have changed what kids are getting on their trays.

Check Out the Best-Selling Album From the Year You Graduated High School

Do you remember the top album from the year you graduated high school? Stacker analyzed Billboard data to determine just that, looking at the best-selling album from every year going all the way back to 1956. Sales data is included only from 1992 onward when Nielsen's SoundScan began gathering computerized figures.

Going in chronological order from 1956 to 2020, we present the best-selling album from the year you graduated high school.