Shrinking budgets lead more school districts to follow rural example and adopt four-day weeks

We last reported about the push for four-day school weeks in 2008, but now the movement is gaining momentum as schools look to save expenses on travel, salaries, utilities and food. Class time is generally made up by lengthening it on the four days that school is in session.

Data from the Education Commission of the States shows that "of the nearly 15,000-plus districts nationwide, more than 100 in at least 17 states currently use the four-day system," Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal reports, and dozens of other districts are considering the move. (WSJ map; some states with four-day schools, such as Kentucky, don't have specific authorization but allow districts freedom to schedule days.) A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education told Herring she couldn't comment on four-day weeks in specific districts, but the department was generally "concerned about financial constraints leading to a reduction in learning time."

Until recently, four-day school weeks were generally found just in rural schools, but the nationwide budget crisis has brought the trend to more urban and suburban areas, Herring writes. Four-day school weeks are most common in the West, Herring reports, where as many as one=fourth of districts have adopted the policy. Around a third of Colorado's 178 districts operate on the shortened schedule.

School officials say the budget crisis has left them with little choice. "We've repeatedly asked our residents to pay higher taxes, cut some of our staff, and we may even close one of our schools," Deb Henton, superintendent of the North Branch, Minn., district, which is moving to a four-day week, told Herring. "What else can you really do?" (Read more)