A district in Virginia has proposed a four-day school week “to save money, alleviate staffing shortages and prioritize mental health,” Gray Media’s WDBJ7 reports.
Under initial terms, the revised schedule would start on Tuesdays and make each school day longer by about an hour, Franklin County Public Schools said.
“It allows us to do a lot more of the things during the school day, so to speak, that right now are getting sort of shunted to after-hours, when it’s oftentimes a lot harder to fit those things in,” said Shannon Brooks, a high school English and journalism teacher. “Specifically, I’m thinking in terms like planning, grading, parent phone calls.”
At the same time, Brooks acknowledges parents may be less than enthusiastic about the proposal.
“There are definite concerns about how this would impact student achievement,” she noted. “And the short answer is that we simply don’t know. It seems like the benefits to student achievement are pretty minimal.”
