VIENNA — Maries R-1 Superintendent Teresa Messersmith gave a presentation about four-day school weeks to school board members at the Jan. 24 meeting.

After the Steelville and Cuba school districts approved switches to four-day weeks beginning next year, Maries R-1 will be the only school district in the Gasconade Valley Conference to have a five-day school week. Messersmith said about 28 percent of Missouri schools operate on a four-day schedule. She said only one school that had switched to a four-day week had decided to switch back to five days.

“Tonight I just wanted to give you the basics of what a four-day school week looks like,” she said. “There would still be a lot of legwork if this is something the district is interested in at all.”

Messersmith said next school year is not an option for a four-day school week. If the board wanted to adopt the four-day schedule, the 2024-25 school year would be the earliest time to implement the plan.

“It’s something we’d have to really do some research and consider,” she said.

Improved attendance, fewer discipline issues, improved mental health and more quality time with family were reasons Messersmith provided in favor of switching to a four-day week.

Benefits Messersmith listed from a district staff perspective included staff retention, additional planning and maintenance time, longer instructional time, reduced teacher burnout, improved mental health, more time with families, increased professional development opportunities, easing substitute shortages and minor reduced costs for transportation and facilities.

Points Messersmith’s research found against four-day weeks included longer school days, accessibility to Monday sports practices for nondrivers, the necessity of extra food in snack bags sent home with students over the weekend, an extra day of childcare for families and uncertainty of academic achievement.

Messersmith said many districts implemented a childcare system for the extra day off, but most of them discontinued the service after it gathered little interest from parents.  She said parents at New Bloomfield use that district’s childcare service. Teachers run it on a rotating schedule, so they work very few Mondays each year.

She said that the districts she had talked to said that switching to a four-day week had not changed their test scores in either a positive or negative way.

Board member Mike Kleffner asked if faculty and staff would be taking pay cuts by moving to four-day school weeks.

Messersmith said district employees would not lose money. She said other districts have seen only minor savings by switching to four-day weeks because some, such as custodians, would still work on the fifth day. Many other districts did not cut pay for other employees after switching to four-day weeks because salaries were already low.

“It’s a way to provide them with a pay increase even though they’re off that day,” she said.

Messersmith said that it would be different for bus drivers because they receive payment per mile, but that discussion could happen at a later date because the presentation was informational and not an action item.

The four-day school week could benefit the district’s transportation by allowing savings on fuel and making bus maintenance and repairs easier to schedule.

“I know some of our bus drivers now have to borrow a bus if they have a breakdown,” Messersmith said. “Maybe they could schedule it to get it done on a Monday.”

Most districts choose Monday as their off-day. Advantages Messersmith listed for choosing Monday as the off day instead of Friday included that most federal holidays occur on Mondays, some doctors close on Fridays, other four-day schools in the area have Monday off if they wanted to do shared professional development and better accommodation for academics and athletics when weekend contests would need to continue.

Adopting a four-day school week would mean changing the length of school days to prevent students from losing too much instructional time.

Messersmith compared the district’s usual calendar to a hypothetical calendar showing what important dates would be if the district switched to four-day weeks. The school year would still start on the fourth Tuesday of August. Thanksgiving Break would be the same. Winter Break would be shorter. This school year, for example, the break would have been four days shorter had there been a four-day week.

Parent-teacher conferences would happen on the off day rather than in the evenings with the following Friday off. On the current calendar, Good Friday and the following Monday are off, but that would switch to only Good Friday on the four-day schedule. The last day of school this year is May 17, but switching to four-day weeks would move that back about a week.

The district would make it a priority to schedule field trips on non-instructional days to avoid taking students out of classes.

Summer school now runs from the last two weeks of May until mid-June. On a four-day week schedule, summer school would run throughout June. The number of instructional days would drop from 22 to 20 days.

“That’s something teachers need to think about,” Messersmith said. “Are you willing to give up your month of school because school will go longer to have more instructional time in the month of May?”

Teachers would have 12 professional development days instead of the usual 10 days’ worth of professional development hours. Messersmith said instead of having to group scattered hours together to make 10 days worth of professional development training, the four-day schedule would allow for 12 individual days set aside only for professional development.

The number of in-class days for students would drop from the current 170 days. Exactly how many days dropped from the schedule would depend on how long the school day became. As a comparison, Messersmith said Belle’s school year has 145 days and Bourbon’s school year has 149.5 days. Both districts have four-day school weeks.

Right now, Maries R-1’s school year consists of 1,104 student hours. If the district switched to 149.5 days in the school year, the student hours would drop to about 1,096 hours. The state requires 1,044 hours of instructional time and an additional 36 hours if the district wants to build snow days into the schedule.

Messersmith said that if the district had to extend the school day to accommodate instructional time lost by shortening the school week, it would reevaluate bus routes. The goal would be to keep pickup and dropoff times as close to the same as possible.

On the current schedule, school starts at 8:05 a.m. and ends at 3:20 p.m. The earliest bus pickup happens around 6:25 a.m. The latest bus dropoff is around 4:50 p.m.

Messersmith presented an estimation of the school day if the district moved to a four-day week. The school day would begin around 8 a.m. and end around 3:45 p.m. The earliest bus pickup would be around 6:15 a.m. The latest bus dropoff would be around 5:15 p.m.

“A four-day school week would extend our learning throughout the day, but the elementary team will create purposeful breaks to ensure kids are able to handle the lessons they are exposed to,” Messersmith said.

She suggested teachers could cover math before special classes and resume after, which some classes do now. Other options to give the younger classes breaks from learning blocks included longer recesses and special classes.

“We know for our younger students, especially,” Messersmith said. “A longer day is going to be hard on them.”

For the older grades, class time would extend from 50 minutes to 55 minutes. Messersmith said the district could try to start and end the day with electives and keep core classes in the middle of the day. Passing periods would increase from four minutes to five minutes, which Messersmith said could reduce the number of tardies. Lunch shifts would still be 25 minutes.

Messersmith said students who attend Rolla Technical Institute (RTI) could continue attending on the off day either in-seat or virtually. She said the district would have to make a decision if it got to the point that it seriously considered the four-day school week. Other districts tried sending students in person on off days, but attendance was poor. Now students in those districts attend RTI virtually on Mondays.

Messersmith said moving to a four-day school week would not really affect the district’s special services offerings. She said the district would amend individualized educational programs to reflect the change in the schedule. The new schedule would not interrupt services such as occupational therapy and physical therapy. Speech and language services would also not face a major impact.

Some of the potential benefits of the four-day week from an athletics perspective include providing a break for players and coaches, giving time to get ahead on school work, preventing Monday games from causing athletes to miss class, attracting more coaches, allowing more time for team-building and recovery from Saturday events.

Some of the potential negative impacts of the four-day week on athletes and coaches include later practice times, odd Monday scheduling and possible missed instructional time during trips.

Coaches would have the choice to hold practices on the off day. Moving to the four-day school week would allow teams both in the district and the community to have more access to the gym.

According to Messersmith, districts she had talked to that had surveyed their teachers about moving to four-day school weeks found improvements in professional development, staff morale, planning and grading time, work-home balance for teachers, attendance from students and staff and retention of staff.

Priorities for those teachers included maintaining decent holiday breaks, having quality professional development days and ensuring school years end by Memorial Day.

Teachers surveyed about four-day school weeks in other districts said concerns included longer days for students, finding time to teach the entire curriculum, finding a safe place for students to go on the off day, making sure kids who depend on school meals get fed and childcare for parents who work 8 to 5 jobs.

Messersmith said that if the district wants to continue exploring the possibility of a four-day school week, the next step is to survey teachers for their thoughts on the idea. After surveying teachers, the district would survey parents.

“I think it is very important to get our community and parents’ input,” Messersmith said. “Would a four-day school week affect your family in a positive manner?”

She also provided a list of concerns parents might have that the district would need to address, including topics such as transportation, nutrition and extra enrichment on the off day. The process of moving to a four-day week would also include a public comment session at a school board meeting for community members to share their thoughts on the possible change.

Following the presentation, board president Vicki Bade asked the other board members if they would like to move forward in gathering data.

“I would like the questionnaires to be sure and ask the teachers and the parents if they feel like the kids are going to learn with that one less day,” board vice-president Penny Schoene said. “High-achievers definitely will because they’re going to regardless, but what about kids who don’t have the same opportunities and they rely on the in-place times?”

Messersmith said some districts offer tutoring and transportation on the off day for students that meet certain requirements.

Board members recommended sending an internal survey to teachers and staff. Then, they wanted to see survey results from parents. Messersmith said she would get started on the surveys before the February board meeting.

“This is a first-time look at this,” Bade said. “There will be a chance for more questions.

The Maries R-2 School Board discussed the state commissioner’s aversion to the four-day school week during their Jan. 31. That story can be found on page 5.