The East Coast of the United States watches the rest of their country quickly adapt to a four day school week as they debate whether or not the shift is effective. 876 school districts within 26 states have made the change. Must it be necessary for New Jersey?
“More districts are moving toward this model–not many large districts–, but the data is not supporting it. And, it is in areas that have low education funding and teacher shortages. This would not really happen in New Jersey,” High School English Teacher in Oregon Elizabeth Hartford told The Fanscotian.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools have seen it to be much more efficient to operate the school district for fewer days in terms of cost, as it is one day less that school buses are on the roads for example. Especially due to inflation with gas pricing since the start of the Ukrainian war.
Oregon State University suggests that those schools may utilize the switch to a four-day week as a non-mentary benefit to compensate teachers for reduced salary.
“So would it be that [schools] are doing this just because [they] don’t want school buses on the road? Or are you doing it because you really feel like your [school] can do something innovative, new and awesome?” Global Perspectives and Philosophy Teacher Daniel Valentine said.
While four days of learning for students may be beneficial to a school’s funding, also keeping the fifth day for teachers to work can increase the improvement of the educational system with this model. This allows teachers to provide dedicated time for student extra help and working together for the advancement of their curriculum.
Edutopia.com discusses Germany and their approach in conducting weekly staff meetings which allowed for a stronger teaching environment.
“[Miami, Florida] decided to do athletics on Fridays. And so they’ve done a Monday through Thursday academic schedule, and then sports’ [games and competitions] are [held] on Fridays,” Valentine said.
Though, this isn’t only seen as a positive factor.
“There is a student [who] was frustrated with that,” Valentine said. “[Saying something like], ‘so we don’t have time for school, but we have time for me to go wrestle?’”
So, if New Jersey were to switch to this schedule, would school days and years be made longer to compensate for the amount of time that students would be missing?
“Less days of school [per week] means less [of] summer, a time where most families go on vacation [which] will have to be cut short.” SPF Junior Arielle Henry said.
New Jersey, being a tourist state, has an entire economy based around summer vacation that relies on the employment of teenagers for many jobs, especially summer camp.
But potentially, this can be a plus for the youth. Knowing that camps could still exist, just not in 98 degrees Farenheit. More so in the fall with a longer school break.
“I would rather see more of an effort to not necessarily make students go [through an] exponentially longer school calendar, but [to] create different breaks throughout the course of the year,” Valentine said. “That allows students to regenerate but not have them fall off that summer cliff, like we’ve been seeing.”
The struggle every teacher faces of having to rebuild the skills they have previously gained and work off of that knowledge can be fixed with this adjustment. This also lets students with a tougher situation at home to continuously return to a welcoming environment with food and friends. Allowing all to build and grow lasting relationships that remain active year-long.
Though the requirement for schooling made by the state is to have 180 school days each year. With this change, would that too have to be adjusted?
The educational system that schools are in now was created by an educational revolution over 100 years ago. Over time, there has been slight adjustments to it. Though, the wholesale idea of rethinking this current system isn’t seen as an existential threat, despite the evidence of other nations performing better from their changes and the potentiality of slightly better results with this one.
