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   Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks

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Topic: Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks (Read 400 times)

Rhune
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Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks
« on: Sep 11^th, 2002, 1:22pm »

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Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks
Districts cite money concerns, fewer absences behind idea
September 11, 2002 Posted: 8:43 AM EDT (1243 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Annie Bergeaux and her high school classmates in Midland, Louisiana, will be taking most Fridays off this year, spending the time swimming, shopping, baby-sitting, playing basketball or just hanging out with friends. It's all with the blessing of their teachers, their parents and school officials.

Bucking a nationwide trend toward bulking up school calendars, dozens of rural school districts are actually paring back their work weeks, cramming more academics into four days.

The trade-off: School days are an hour or more longer than in most schools.

Schools find that by knocking off Fridays or Mondays can save money on transportation, heating and substitute teachers.

Advocates say four-day weeks have other advantages. They leave teachers with fewer interruptions and fewer student absences. They also cut down on teacher absences and allow schools to hire fewer substitutes -- the fifth day is used for teacher training or to free up teachers for personal appointments.

School districts in six states -- Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and South Dakota -- are trying it this year.

Improving morale, grades
Bergeaux, 15, spent her freshman year at tiny Midland High School on four-day weeks and loved them.

"By the end of the week you aren't frustrated with everybody," she said. "You weren't so stressed and cramming everything in."

In many rural areas, the change allows schools to keep art, music and other classes often cut in tight budgets.

Four-day weeks also improve student morale and behavior, said Clyde Briley, principal of Midland, 150 miles west of New Orleans.

"The biggest problem we had was in motivating students to do their best," he said. "I felt that this was a good motivational thing -- if you do good and work hard and do your best, you can have some extra time to do other things, what you like to do, or to have a part-time job."

Briley said grade-point averages rose "considerably" last year during the first Fridays-off calendar, with failing grades down 50 percent.

"Kids have tried harder," he said.

In most districts, schools reserve Fridays for field trips, football games and special activities such as homecoming; the Monday-Thursday schedule is for academics.

"They are serious about education Monday through Thursday," said Kay Post, who oversees alternative schedules for Wyoming public schools.

Nationwide, about 100 school districts are set to follow four-day schedules this fall, up slightly from last year. All are rural and most are small, each with fewer than 1,000 students.

For the first time this month, schools in Hot Springs, South Dakota, will try four-day weeks, hoping it will help trim a needed $250,000 to $400,000 from the budget. The move will save the schools about $18,000 on transportation costs and more on substitute teachers, said Superintendent Vern G. Hagedorn, who looked into four-day weeks after seeing that other Western school districts liked them.

Child-care worries often scuttle the four-day week, principals said, but in Hot Springs, parents can take advantage of a state grant that will provide licensed care on Fridays.

Even with the four-day weeks, Hagedorn hopes to log about 1,162 hours of instruction time, well above the state-minimum 960.

Turning the clock back?
Critics point out that the 1990s actually brought a push to extend the school calendar past the traditional 180 days, to resemble those in Japan and Europe.

"It's really unusual for people to turn the clock back, in a sense, and have fewer school days," said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, which studies social, economic and political issues.

"I haven't seen too many people say with a straight face that this produces superior academic performance, so I definitely don't expect this one to take off."

Independent education researcher Joy Dryfoos agreed. "I would think it would wreak havoc with any working parent's schedule," she said.

Briley, who said parents "enjoy having their kids available on Friday," said his school will try the four-day week it again this fall.

Each day, school begins 20 minutes earlier and goes 25 minutes later, with longer classes. Students who are failing a course are required to attend three hours of tutoring on Friday. Students cited for disciplinary problems do maintenance and landscaping work then.

Bergeaux's sister, 18-year-old Casey, who graduated from Midland last spring, said she loved having Fridays off -- the longer school day meant more time to finish homework before going home.

"By the end of the day, we went home and had almost no homework at all," she said. "We were constantly in class."

Students were never absent, she said, and the extra day off gave her more time to relax with friends.

"We were able to do so many things as a class. We'd get together on Fridays and just have fun."

But she acknowledged, "I don't think it would be too good in a bigger school."

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.

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Irishlass
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Re: Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks
« Reply #1 on: Sep 12^th, 2002, 5:54pm »

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This is the first I've heard of this. I can see where it just might work. It appears that the schools that have tried it are seeing positive results with grades and attendance. Most schools are operating on "bare bones" budgets and this could be the answer to that problem.

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Rhune
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Re: Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks
« Reply #2 on: Sep 13^th, 2002, 11:14am »

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Single-sex classrooms gaining favor
Advocates cite less disruptions, higher test scores
September 12, 2002 Posted: 4:05 PM EDT (2005 GMT)

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) -- Without a snicker, or even a whisper, the eighth-grade boys listened as each of their classmates stood and pledged to study hard and earn high marks to get ready for high school.

Social studies teacher Wilma K. Spencer smiled. On the first day of single-sex classrooms at Southern Leadership Academy, her students had abandoned the wisecracks, the note-passing, the fighting, the flirting and the shyness, and were ready to learn.

"I think sometimes with the two genders together, they are so influenced by each other," she said. "They want to impress each other."

The public middle school, plagued by low test scores and unruliness, is near the forefront of an initiative that could catch hold as the U.S. Department of Education drafts regulations making it easier for schools to create gender-specific classes.

From the day's first bell to the last, Southern's 820 boys and girls are cloistered in separate classrooms. Only chorus and band remain coed.

Class times are staggered to avoid boys and girls mingling in the hallways. They might eat lunch at the same time, but they can't sit at the same tables.

Some students say the change reduces distractions and eases pressures.

"We won't be embarrassed to stand up in front of the class and do a report," said seventh-grader Ebonee Herd. "And we don't have to look all pretty-pretty."

Seeing a change
Nearly 65 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches at the school, tucked into a South Louisville working-class neighborhood near the famed Churchill Downs horse track.

The school has struggled with low test scores and high suspension rates for several years. "We felt we needed to think out of the box and take a risk and do something dramatically different that was substantive," Principal Anita Jones said.

The faculty recommended switching to single-sex classrooms, and the plan was approved by the school's local council: Jones, three teachers and two parents.

Southern followed the lead of Paducah Middle School, about 225 miles west of Louisville, which set up some single-gender classes in the middle of the last school year.

Boys and girls attend separate classes in sixth grade, but they are gradually brought together in school as they prepare for high school.

Assistant Principal Richard Dowdy said that during the first three days of the last school year, when all classrooms remain mixed, 25 students were sent to the office for misconduct. This year, the number dipped to four.

Title IX and the single-sex classroom
Nationally, about 15 public schools have same-sex-only classrooms or are exclusively boys or girls schools, said Dr. Leonard Sax, a psychologist and physician who heads the Maryland-based National Association for Single Sex Public Education. An additional 40 to 50 schools offer single-sex classes but don't require them, he said.

Sax predicted the numbers will grow once the government removes a legal cloud over schools with single-sex classrooms.

The Title IX law prohibits public schools from discriminating on the basis of sex, and schools with single-sex classrooms have tried to avoid a conflict with the law by offering boys and girls an essentially equal education.

The Education Department is drafting new Title IX regulations to give schools more flexibility to offer single-sex instruction. A final version likely will take effect next year, said department spokesman Dan Langan.

But Nancy Zirkin, spokeswoman for the American Association of University Women, said her group opposes the change because "separate is never equal."

"We would never accept this in a race context. Why in the world are we doing this in a gender context?" Zirkin said.

The National Education Association, in a letter to the department, said single-sex public education would elevate the "discredited doctrine of `separate but equal' to official government policy," promote "harmful and false sex stereotypes" and leave students ill-prepared for the real world.

NEA staff attorney Cindy Chmielewski added in an interview, "There is nothing out there that can conclusively demonstrate that single-sex education alone improves student achievement."

But at Southern Leadership Academy, Assistant Principal Bill Redmon likes the early results of dividing the genders.

"From what I've seen going around the classrooms, it's much more orderly," he said during lunchroom duty. "We don't have the boy-girl hormonal thing going on."

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Rhune
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Re: Schools cut costs with 4-day weeks
« Reply #3 on: Sep 13^th, 2002, 11:15am »

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I'm not sure I'm in favor of this... to me school should be equal parts book learning and social learning.

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