Washington expects to resume talks on 4-day school week

WASHINGTON — School officials in Washington say they’ve got a rough timeline worked out to decide whether the district will switch to a four-day school week, after canning discussions last spring due to the lack of preparation time.

The move would put Washington on the same page as a growing number of rural districts in Southeast Iowa like WACO, Highland and Winfield-Mt. Union. There, district officials have said the resulting three-day weekends boosted kids’ enthusiasm about school and helped attract young educators with salaries in small districts’ budget ranges.

Washington Superintendent Willie Stone said at a board meeting Oct. 9 the district expected to make its decision before this spring, and presented a timeline for the deliberation process.

“We want to make sure we get enough information for everybody to make an informed decision before we make huge changes like this,” he said.

The timeline involves more board discussions and information-gathering from other school districts in the short term. The district also expects to send out surveys to community stakeholders in the near future.

Stone said he hoped to get more feedback from the effort than a survey shared last school year, which drew about 269 student responses, 159 from staff, and 552 community replies. The district had a certified enrollment of 1,648 last year.

“Staff, students, parents, community members, we need support from all of them,” Stone said. “We need more than 10% of people taking a survey, we need to try to get to 60, 70, 80% if we can, just so we know what the majority of people want to do, instead of what 30% of the population wants to do.”

This December and January, the superintendent said schools would offer presentations to the community on the implications of a four-day school week. Shortly after that, officials would have a draft calendar ready, to see how the proposal aligns with events throughout the year.

School board members can expect a first vote on the change as early as February, according to Stone.

“The survey should guide us as far as what way we want to go,” he said. “And we’ll just have a larger discussion here to see if that’s the way we want to move forward as a board.”

In the meantime, school officials plan to visit Saydel, one of the only schools close to Washington’s size to start following a four-day week this academic year. The district in rural Polk County had a certified enrollment of just over 1,000 in 2023-24.

In Southeast Iowa, most of the districts switching to four-day school weeks have smaller student bodies. WACO was the first in the state to try the model, launching it about a decade ago. Highland and Winfield-Mt. Union, trying it for the first time this year, have enrollment counts of about 589 and 316, respectively.

“Right now, there’s not a lot of 3As, there’s really not even a lot of 2As,” Stone said. “From zero to about 800 students, those are the buildings that seem to have jumped to it, more so than bigger districts.”

Similar discussions popped up around Southeast Iowa last spring, after Highland announced it would make the switch. Several districts, including Washington, Pekin and New London, said they would hold off on the decision with the 2024-25 school year so close at hand, but decision-makers continued to express interest in the idea moving forward.

“The board is still interested in looking at it, but it was not the right timing for the 2024-25 school year,” Pekin Superintendent Derek Philips said in March. “There are still some questions people want answered.”

In schools that make the change, the schedule of long days paired with long weekends seems fairly popular.

“It’s awesome, it’s so much better,” one WACO student said in a discussion on the topic with Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig in September. Other students in the room said they agreed.

Still, the switch from five days to four would be more than a little complicated.

Most schools that make the change report positive outcomes in terms of building morale, transportation costs, and prospective employee interest, an especially important factor as schools struggle to fill teacher openings across the state.

It also frees up staff time for weekly professional development, which other districts typically do at the end of an early-release school day, and gives administrators a day to catch up.

“For me, it’s a day you still have to work, but it’s quieter,” said Ken Crawford, the superintendent of both Highland and WACO school districts. “Without people here (I) can knock several things out … and for the principals, I think it’ll be like, ‘Wow, I actually have time to breathe.’”

On the other hand, districts have to consider potential impacts on younger families that don’t have other child care lined up during the work week, and the implications for food-insecure students who would lose a day of free or reduced-cost lunch and breakfast.

Decision-makers in some districts said they worried about the result on students’ academic success. And a handful of anecdotes suggest the years immediately following a transition to 4-day weeks come with growing pains.

A 2023 study in Oregon from Early Child Research Quarterly found “minimal and non-significant differences” in student achievement among pupils who attended 4-day versus 5-day school weeks from kindergarten through third grade. But it suggested shorter weeks could cap the success of top-performing students: among those who scored highest on early math and language arts assessments in preschool, 4-day students in the study scored slightly worse than their equally high-performing peers following 5-day weeks. The study found no such discrepancy for students who performed at or below average in preschool.

Another 2021 study from the RAND Corporation found that “student achievement did not grow as fast” in four-day districts as in comparable 5-day ones, based on national assessment scores, and concluded that the gap between 4- and 5-day districts grew over time.

The same study reported that perceived benefits of the four-day school week were often greater than the data supported, and it found no statistically significant difference in student attendance between districts with different week lengths. It did, however, find teachers missed fewer days in 4-day schools, suggesting the model could help prevent burnout.

Washington school board President Troy Suchan said he didn’t expect Washington to be alone in its discussion, and anticipated other schools would start talking about 4-day weeks again in the near future.

“I think it’ll start showing up more, just like it did last year,” he said. “From what I’ve heard, there’s still a lot of districts. A lot of them, I think, were caught the same way we were last year, so I think it’s probably going to get a lot more press here in the next few months.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com