Have you ever thought about having a four day school week? What about having Friday off to reboot or even having a virtual school day online? Over the last few years, there have been numerous intuitions adopting a four day school week.
This school year, there are about 900 districts taking this step in changing throughout the United States. In the state of Michigan, there are only two school districts and one private school that have started this. Big Jackson in the Northwest Lower Peninsula, and Republic-Michigamme in the Upper Peninsula’s Iron County are the two districts and Detroit Catholic Central is the sole school that has adopted this as well. Another positive change in going to a four day school week is that these schools are seeing less absences from both students and teachers. In an article by WXYZ, the ”Superintendent of North College Hill City School District in Cincinnati, Ohio has stated, “I can say that I’m very happy about this that our absenteeism dropped 21%.”
Many people by the fifth day of the week are mentally drained. This is when the absences start to come in, people need a mental rest day every once in a while and even maybe every week. When people don’t get mental breaks, it is normal for people to reduce their effort. The work will decrease and the probability of it being proficient is very low, which is a big reason why the schools have to find substitute teachers to fill in for teacher absences. Student absences cause problems as well. They are drained, which causes them to miss school and then their work just piles up. According to the website Michigan Capitol Confidential, “The Ann Arbor district spent $3.78 million on substitute teachers last school year.” If schools decided to go down to four days a week, districts could save millions of dollars on substitute teachers and absences could be heavily reduced.
Another reason that would benefit schools is less district spending. With there only being four school days in a week it would save money on transportation, food, and energy costs. This could be super helpful for the schools that are in rural areas because it could mean students need transportation that live very far away. The food cost would go down because the school would have to pay and prepare one less day of food for the whole school. The energy would go down because all the lights and power could get turned off on every Friday.
On the other side of this, reducing school weeks to only four days would cause the school days and year to become longer. Yes, the school weeks would have less days but there would be more days or even weeks added on at the end of the school year. The schools that have days that are seven hours could make their days eight or nine hours long. This could help with having the same amount of weeks in the year. With the longer school days this could cause problems with transportation issues for many students with rides or even bussing.
In conclusion, the pros of having a four day school week outweigh the cons. Belleville should consider adopting a four day school week to reduce costs, reduce student and teacher absences, and to improve overall student and teacher mental health.
