BAUXITE, Ark. – The four-day school week is becoming more and more popular in Arkansas.
Statistics from the Arkansas Department of Education show in the 2023-2024 school year, 38, or one out of every seven districts, are now on four-days-a-week schedules.
That is up from 29 districts during 2022-2023 and 18 in 2021-2022. Five years ago, only two districts out of roughly 260 in Arkansas were using a four-day schedule.
The latest to announce the switch is Bauxite Schools in Saline County which will have Mondays starting in August.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the district said there has been a shortage in not only teachers but all school positions. A four-day school week is Bauxite’s solution.
“Taking that break is so needed,” Bauxite High School teacher Jessica Hilderbrand said.
Hilderbrand said it is hard to manage life around an eight-to-five job, but with Mondays free next year, she’ll be able to run errands without sacrificing her children’s or students’ education.
“Having a sub in here, it’s almost like losing an entire day,” Hilderbrand said. “(Next year) I’m able to be in classroom instead of having to miss because I have a doctor’s appointment, or my kids have a doctor’s appointment.”
The district made the decision in December after a survey showed 89% of staff were in favor of it. Along with 80% of parents who said they were not against it. The concerns of working parents were school days being longer (7:30 a.m. to 3:51 p.m.), where food-insecure students would get an extra meal, and where working families would be able to get child care.
Solutions will be adding more breaks, extending an after-school program’s hours on Mondays, and packing more in the existing backpack program.
“They are really working well with us to try and accommodate our needs, so this will be a good thing,” Markedia Patrick said.
Patrick said she has two students in middle school and high school and said their friends’ parents have been asking her about the change.
“They want to know more about the four-day weeks because they are considering transferring to Bauxite because of that,” Patrick said.
It’s also popular with students like Marcus Wimberly, who is a junior at Bauxite High School. He learned of the change a few weeks ago.
“As an athlete, we’ll still have to practice on Mondays and whatnot, but will allow for more of a mental break, so I was pretty excited,” Wimberly said.
The excitement is something spreading outside the school with applications flooding in for even unadvertised positions like bus drivers, but most importantly highly accredited teachers, the reason Superintendent Matt Donaghy said they are making the change.
“Research shows it doesn’t really matter if you’re a four-day, or five days, or year-round. What makes the biggest impact is those teachers who are in front of those students,” Donaghy said.
There are a lot of other positives Bauxite is hoping for from looking at other schools using four-day weeks. Donaghy said other districts showed better attendance, fewer discipline issues and dropouts, financial savings from less wear and tear on buses and other school equipment, and improved morale for everyone on campus.
The Bauxite school year for 2024-2025 is scheduled to start on Aug. 20 and end on May 23.