Four-day school weeks prove overwhelmingly popular

WASHINGTON — When Keota announced the district-wide switch to a 4-day school week last year, longtime Kindergarten Teacher Jennifer Lathrop was skeptical. She worried the change would leave kids without enough time to learn basic math and reading, or could force cuts to attention on other, less repetition-based subjects.

A year later, her opinion has flipped. Lathrop now says she loves the new schedule, and never wants to switch back.

“I’ve been teaching here for 25 years, and you know how you’re set in your ways,” she said. “But after Christmas break, when the kids had tested and they were doing amazing, (they) were just ready to go in January … It’s a fast-moving pace of a day, but the kids step up to the challenge, and they’ve done great.”

Lathrop isn’t alone. Almost finished with their first academic year piloting 4-day school weeks, students and staff at Keota, Highland and Winfield-Mt. Union alike all overwhelmingly told The Southeast Iowa Union they preferred their new schedules by a long shot.

Students make use of longer weekends

As one would expect, students at the districts say they’re pleased to have an extra day outside the classroom.

Keota Senior Ava Greiner said she often used Fridays for extracurriculars, many of which now schedule practices on the day off, rather than holding late afternoon meetings that once followed hours of classes and even early-morning practices.

“When we had to go (to school) on Fridays, I would be here ‘til sometimes 8 o’clock at night,” she said. “So instead of going to school on that Friday, you’re just getting your activities done without having that extra stress.”

For some, the new schedule represents a chance to get extra work done.

Ashton Galindo, another Keota senior, said he appreciated the chance to take morning Kirkwood classes and pick up shifts working at a local car repair shop. Alexa Hahn, a freshman at Highland, said she’d been using her Fridays to apply for jobs, while countless others said they usually used it for homework. For several students in the ag-heavy community, the time away from class is spent helping parents on family farms or focused on 4-H and FFA projects.

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“A lot of kids at Highland, they’re leaning more toward the farm side of things, I think it gives a good boost on planting, that kind of thing,” said sophomore Addison Pantel, who says she spends some Fridays with friends, and others on the family’s farm north of the district on Meyer Road. “Everyone I know and I’m friends with, they love it.”

The reduction in school days per week has prompted districts to switch from alternating block schedules to more consistent routines featuring shorter classes in the same order, all at the same times every day. Several students said that made their studies easier to manage, and their classes easier to sit through.

And for many, the change simply represents a major qualify of life improvement. Students said the longer weekends gave them a much-appreciated chance to recharge or get caught up.

“It just gives us more time to decompress, and it also gives us time to do the homework that’s built up over the week,” said Jack Krotz, a junior at Highland. “They add some amount of minutes every day, so there’s more class time … and we can get further in certain subjects.”

Staff report improved morale, better PD

The schools’ swap from five-day weeks to four is similarly popular with teachers.

Many expected the new model to come with mental health benefits: more time away from classrooms means more time with their own younger children, or chances for personal things like date nights, self care and lesson planning, all unburdened by the early-morning demands of their profession. Educators also hoped the change would reduce disruptive behaviors among students, who would feel less burnout themselves.

Those expectations have held up across the board, according to staff.

“I get a day to be a mom and a wife, and get all my things done,” Keota Elementary Counselor Marnie Schrader said. “I get two times a month where I get to be on top of my own life. I think I’ve seen our staff as a whole, we just have a more positive mentality. We haven’t hit our end-of-the-year (slump). And we just realized, ‘Whoa, we just went through March and we’re all still going!’”

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The extra time has allowed Highland High School English Teacher and Basketball Coach James Higdon to cut considerable commute hours from his weekly routine, traveling to the Washington County school from his home in Cedar Rapids. He said he uses his free Fridays to help older family members with appointments, and to train for a triathlon, since the Cedar Rapids YMCA’s pool is less crowded on Fridays than it is on weekends.

“I have things I couldn’t do with a teaching schedule, that I can do easily with having a Friday off,” he said. “When my mom died last fall and my dad gave up driving, I was easily able to get him to the bank at the end of the week, or a doctor’s appointment. Those are things that you can’t schedule if you’re working five days a week.”

But one of the biggest benefits, according to educators, is the time they spend in their buildings on those student-free Fridays and Mondays.

All three schools in The Union’s coverage area making the switch said they routinely used four hours of their fifth day for teachers’ professional development, something previously relegated to two-hour after-school meetings on early-out days.

The timing makes all the difference in the world, according to Highland Band Director Andy McDonald.

“I feel like we actually get a lot more done in that four-hour chunk than we used to when it was every week after school,” he said. “I think all of us come into those professional development meetings a little more recharged and able to focus on what we’re discussing, instead of being sidetracked by replaying everything that happened earlier in the day.”

Easier hiring anecdotes seem true

One of the main reasons cited by rural schools switching to 4-day weeks is an ongoing struggle to hire teachers. While reliable data on the issue was hard to come by, anecdotes are widespread from districts that said they had an easier time finding and holding onto talent with 4-day schedules, especially when it came to younger educators.

Those accounts seem to be holding up at schools like Highland, WMU and Keota, where several first-year teachers say the schedule was a major draw.

“It was a pretty large draw, actually,” said WMU K-6 Special Ed Teacher Suzan Harrison, who started at the district this school year after transferring from Mt. Pleasant. “I had a baby in May, so I knew I would need time for doctor’s appointments. It has been a great way for me to schedule appointments and things I need to take care of so I don’t have to be gone during the week.”

Lyndsey Trahan, a first-year teacher at Highland High School and Middle School, said the setup was a major factor in her decision to accept an offer there as well, hoping to maintain a healthy work-life balance as she launches her career.

“It was super nice, because now I get some extra time at home,” she said. “I’m able to go on a weekend trip back home if I want to, a little bit longer than just a Saturday-Sunday, so I get more time with family as well.”

Administrators say they haven’t seen such high interest in their schools’ job openings in recent memory, citing broader candidate pools and more enthusiasm among applicants.

WMU, for example, has been one high school science teacher short for the last three years, unable to find a qualified candidate to take the role. The school resorted to remote instruction for some science students, a solution that was both worse for learning and more expensive, according to staff.

But the building has already hired a teacher for the position in the 2025-26 school year. Wahls credits the 4-day week for attracting the newcomer, and for the district’s ability to fill three other roles in the current school year, shortly after the schedule was announced in 2024.

“We’re looking forward to having that (science teacher) come on board for next school year, and we’ve been very pleased with our candidate pool since moving to the 4-day week,” she said.

Former skeptics now favor 4DSW

A handful of community members in Riverside, Keota and Winfield had strong concerns about 4-day weeks when they were first announced by their respective school boards.

Some pointed to inconclusive data on the move’s implications for student performance. Others cited a lack of child care for families with young children, as most parents couldn’t get shorter work weeks of their own. Others were skeptical of students’ abilities to withstand longer days in the classroom, or navigate the switch from block scheduling to shorter class periods. A few worried about the impact on food-insecure students, who depend on schools for a sizable number of meals every week.

Few, if any, of those concerns appear to have materialized in the three districts since moving to 4-day weeks.

Administrators said collaborations with local Backpack programs had resolved fears of food insecurity, while local volunteer groups have tackled the demand for child care, which itself has proven far lower than anticipated.

“We’ve heard nothing, nobody’s complained,” Keota Superintendent Lisa Brenneman said of the community’s child care needs. “We have a whole building full of high schoolers that want to work, and grandparents that want to spend time with their grandkids and families that want to take three-day weekends … Moravia went to a 4-day week, and (they) created a day care, and no one showed up.”

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Teachers say their students, whether on IEP plans, in younger grades or soon-to-graduate classes, have all adapted well to the slightly longer days, with fewer disruptive behaviors and better attendance reported at all three districts compared to last year.

The jury’s still out on the impact for academic performance. At Highland’s high school and middle school, the list of students with Ds and Fs has shrunk, according to Principal Angela Hazelett, but the buildings are still waiting to analyze their performance on statewide standardized tests, which students recently finished.

“Grades have improved, I would say,” she said. “We’re looking at the end of April, probably to get those scores. We need to do some data mining here, over the summer, to see what the impact was.”

That’s not to say the changes were entirely smooth sailing. Educators reported some trouble adapting to the block schedules, and different pacing of instruction throughout the week.

Some students said they had trouble, at first, shifting out of block schedules, even if they approve of the change now.

“I think they made the decision to go into it a little too quickly,” said Alan Nass, a junior at Highland. “My first question was, ‘How are they going to change the credit requirements if there’s seven periods a day?’ … and I couldn’t get an answer, it took me until this year to get an answer, they didn’t think about it.”

Teachers said they faced a learning curve with the switch as well, which demanded an avalanche of adjusted lesson plans and differently paced curriculum to meet the constraints of their new schedules.

Lathrop, the once-skeptical Kindergarten teacher in Keota, said she had to build in less repetition of reading and math materials to fit into shorter class periods. While she plans to rework some of her math lessons next year, she said her students had done better with reading this spring than they had for any year in recent memory.

“It takes a long time to get all that in, and then when you lose a day, how do you make up for that?” she said. “It’s just modifying your curriculum to make sure they’re getting what they need, and finding areas where you don’t repeat, repeat, repeat the same stuff.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com