Havre looks at 4-day school week

The Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees will look at options to implement a four-day school week for the coming school year at their board meeting Tuesday, a subject of much discussion among teachers and the public.

The proposals, created by HPS' Calendar Committee after months of research and discussion, would extend school-day length while eliminating most or all Fridays for students, though most teachers would use the days for things like lesson planning and professional development.

Two options being presented include four-day school weeks and two are for five-day school weeks.

The four-day week concept seems to be largely supported by HPS teachers with a survey being returned with 90 percent approval late last year and a more recent survey to the general public returning 74 percent approval.

However, the proposal has not been without criticism, with the most vocal opposition coming from parents worried about finding child care on Fridays and the effect longer days would have on younger students.

St. Jude Thaddeus School Principal Katie Kopp had not returned by printing deadline calls asking what the parochial Catholic school's opinion is on the issue.

Teacher perspectives

The Havre Public Schools calendar committee that has been putting the proposals together is made up of 15 Havre district employees members including administrators and teachers, as well as members of the board of trustees.

Among those teachers was Havre Education Association President Jessica Jones, who said the committee was asked to look into the possibility of a four-day week by the union after teachers found their schedule during the pandemic, a hybrid four-day week, much more efficient.

Jones said despite the difficulties the pandemic posed for teachers and students, they found they could get through a week's worth of material in four days, and having Friday free for things like professional development, more in-depth lesson planning or rest not only made for a better working life but made them better teachers.

Since then, the committee has been reading studies on the efficacy of four-day school weeks, which are becoming increasingly common in Montana, and discussing possible difficulties and benefits of a new model.

Jones said the committee has created two four-day schedules, one of which has 157 school days with no Fridays, and one with 164 school days including a few Fridays.

She said the second plan lengthens the school day less dramatically for people who may be concerned about students getting too fatigued by the end of the day.

She said she supports the four-day week in part because she believes it will raise the quality of instruction for students, who would have longer class periods to go more in-depth on subjects before teachers send the students home.

This sentiment was echoed by fellow teachers and committee members Lindsey Ratliff and Jane Leinwand, who agreed that having longer class periods would be beneficial to students.

Jones said this will be particularly beneficial to classes with reading groups and for chemistry classes that require a significant amount of preparation, but having more time will help students generally.

Ratliff said she also thinks having Fridays free will improve the mental health of student who, in her experience, tend to be very fatigued by the end of the week.

Another big concern of teachers is the sheer amount of absences on Friday, most of them due to students attending sports or other extracurricular activities.

"It's really hard for teachers to introduce new material when 25 to 50 percent of their students are gone," Ratliff said.

She said having a proper class Fridays can be genuinely difficult because so many student are gone, as well as teachers who are often attending those very same events because their own children are in them.

She said this is especially problematic due to the ongoing substitute teacher shortage the district is facing.

Ratliff said this has lead to a kind of expectation among students that Fridays will not be productive, and she thinks shifting to a four-day week will allow everyone to use their time more efficiently.

"Fridays can be wasted days, a lot of the time," she said.

Leinwand said having Fridays free for teachers will allow them more time to do extra things like professional development and more in-depth lesson planning, making them better teachers as well.

She said the job is very demanding and teachers rarely have time for those kinds of things, but under a four-day week that may well change.

"We're pushed so much that we don't have time to do those extra things, and I think those extra things matter," she said.

Teachers' quality of life

Jones said, as things stand teachers already spend a good chunk of their weekends working and being able to do those things Fridays will benefit not just students, but the teachers, who found they were able to get a lot more rest using the hybrid schedule used during the pandemic.

She said teachers are burning the candle at both ends much of the time and morale among staff isn't in a good place right now, but having Fridays free will allow them to balance work and the rest of their lives, including their physical and mental health, far better.

"Every year of teaching is more complicated than the last, bringing more challenges," she said. "... The ability to balance physical and mental health, family and friendships, and work is more and more challenging."

She said most of the letters from teachers the committee has received mention burnout and she feels the same.

"I'm tired, I'm burnt out, and I need to have more time to rest and prepare so that I can do my job better," she said.

Teachers say another big benefit of the four-day week is that it will potentially increase teacher retention and recruitment.

Ratliff said the district has two math teacher positions open, causing many students to have to learn geometry online, which nobody wants, so anything the school can do to draw in more teachers should be considered.

She said its difficult to draw teachers to the area already and being able to offer a four-day week would be a big incentive.

Jones agreed, saying nearly every study and report she's read mentions the schedules possible use as a recruitment tool being one of its biggest benefits.

Leinwand said even if things don't work out as they hope, trying the four-day week for at least three years will be a valuable experience that will lead to growth for students and teachers.

"I think it's time to try something different," she said. "When you try something different, personal growth happens."

She said she wants to see what kind of effect the schedule will have on staff morale and student achievement. Also while there's sure to be bumps in the road, trying it is, in and of itself, valuable, and doing difficult things, adapting to new situations, is part of what helps students get better, she said.

"Being in education, we try new things ever year," Leinwand said. "Why not try it?"

This sentiment was also expressed by Assistant Superintendent Brad Moore, who has been leading the calendar committee and has led similar efforts at other schools to transition to four-day weeks.

"It's important for educators to always be looking for ways to improve their school," Moore said.

He said this new schedule may be a way to do that, but he understands that changes like this can be intimidating.

However, he said, he thinks there's a reason so many schools are transitioning to four-day weeks.

Sidney High School has switched to a four-day week and Park County High School in Livingston is using a hybrid version with some Fridays off and some on.

"It's more and more common all the time in Montana," Moore said, "so that has to tell you something is working."

Moore said Havre is larger than many of the schools going to a four-day week, so that is a complicating factor, but he thinks the committee has done its due diligence in studying the issue, taking input and making sure they have everything in order for Tuesday's presentation.

Moore's leadership was praised by teachers on the committee, particularly Leinwand, who said he brought a tremendous amount of experience and diligence to the table.

Ratliff said she thinks the four-day week is an opportunity for the district to make a bold decision to make things better for teachers and students.

"Change can be scary, but we have a lot of great teachers that care about their students," she said. "Our admin care about our teachers and students, and the board cares about our students, admin and teachers, and we're wiling to do the work to address issues as they come."

"There's always going to be hiccups, but I have faith in our teachers our board and our admin," she added.

Parent perspectives

Leinwand said the committee probably wouldn't have moved forward on creating proposals at all if the community response through their survey wasn't so in favor of it.

While the survey of the public returned 74 percent in favor of a four-day week, volunteer surveys are not definitive gauges of public opinion.

After reaching out to parents of Havre students for their opinions over social media the Havre Daily News got a number of different opinions.

While most initial responses were largely in favor of the four-day week the most outspoken of parents expressed two major concerns. The first was how the longer days would affect younger students.

Among these respondents was Jessica Klindworth, parent of two Havre Public Schools students as well as a 3-year-old son bound for Havre Public Schools in the near future. Klindworth aid she was in favor of allowing the older students to go to four days a week, but opposed it for elementary students.

"Oh yeah, for the older kids that's fine," she said. "But for elementary kids, I oppose it."

She said her other big concern is paying for child care, which she said is very expensive, sometimes costing up to $700 per month.

"That's a third of my income," she said.

The concern about child care was the primary issue for the parents that expressed concern or opposition to the proposal with most responses at least mentioning it.

Ratliff said this is an issue that the committee has been very cognizant of and she said if the school does adopt a four-day week they would work hard to help parents out.

During a forum HPS held with a panel of teachers and administrators from Montana schools with four-day weeks, she said, most said they had the same concerns expressed to them, but the issue didn't end up being nearly as big of a problem as parents feared.

Indeed teachers and administrators from North Star School, Wolf Point and other places in Montana said parents found a way to make it work either by relying on local Boys & Girls Clubs, grandparents or even older students offering day care during their Friday's off.

Havre Superintendent Craig Mueller said he's had conversations with the Boys & Girls Club of the Hi-Line and they have a limit on how many students they can provide services to and meals could be a challenge, but he's been talking to schools that rely on their own student population to provide babysitting services, some of whom seem to be able to earn community service hours in the process.

Ratliff said it is a tough issue, but parents managed to make it work during the pandemic so it can be done, a sentiment shared by Leinwand and Jones.

She also said its important to know that the proposed schedule do not extend the day to extreme lengths and there is always the option to use the 164-day schedule.

"The kids aren't going to be in school nine hours a day," she said.

Ratliff also said having children at home more can be a benefit in her experience.

These responses were not convincing to all parents, however.

Rich Moone, another parent of a Havre Public School student, said he thinks this push for a four-day week is almost entirely for the benefit of teachers, not students who he said have already suffered enough in the past two years of on-and-off remote learning.

"Our kids have spent enough time out of class," he said. "We don't need this."

He said considering how much adaptation students have had to to in the past few years, it's time to get back to normal.

One parent said she believes the push is part of larger conspiracies to gain control of children and how they think.

Despite some negative responses to the proposal, most seemed more concerned than directly opposed and the four-day week was not without defenders among responses.

Michaela Ferda said her daughter is in kindergarten in Havre Public Schools, but she's no stranger to the four-day week.

She said she grew up in a district in Arizona that transferred to a four-day week to save money on things like transportation, but found that it benefited the school in far more ways than expected and they never went back.

She said she loved it and thinks it's a great idea for Havre Public Schools, in part because it will give her more time with her daughter.

"I like her being home more," she said.

Ferda said she works from home, so the issue of child care doesn't really affect her, but she is sympathetic to those concerned about it.

However, she said, she thinks it's wrong to think of public school as free day care, a mentality she said has affected school negatively in general and isn't fair to the people in the school system, many of whom she is friends with.

She also said she thinks freeing up Friday will give janitorial staff a chance to clean the school more throughly, which is vital considering how bad this year has been for illness-based absences, and not just for COVID-19.

While responses to the proposal overall have been a fairly even mix, the Havre Daily News request for comment was voluntary and is not necessarily a gauge of the overall popularity of any given argument for or against.