Given the flexibility law allows school to meet a set number of hours instead of days of instruction, some schools have shifted to a different schedule model. There was interest expressed in the calendar committee meeting on the possibility of a 4 day school week. As such, we want to hear from you. This would be a sizable change to our operation, should it get to that point. It is important that you have a voice at the table collectively.
One of the primary reasons to consider this change is to improve our ability to recruit and retain teachers. Having heard from superintendents of other schools, the 4 day week concept has proven to be the best recruiting tool they have had in the last decade. Given our consistent struggle to fill positions, this could help in those efforts.
The intent of this survey is to understand where you stand on the issue and the pro's/con's you see. Presently, this is at the very early stages and is meant to inform the conversation with no guarantees as to which way it may go. The intent here is not make any attempt to steer the conversation, simply seek to understand your opinions and then we will see where things go from there.
Should this go forward, we have talked about adding 10 minutes to the start of the day, beginning at 8:15 which likely won't affect morning bus routes as they are usually here around 8. We may add 11 minutes to the end of the day so the school hours would be 8:15-3:45 with 58 minute periods. To get our hours in, we talked about starting 5 days sooner and making some modifications to teacher PD days and leaving vacations the same, potentially. There is debate about offering services on Fridays, I'm presently not sure we would unless there is enough need for it (another reason for this survey).
This survey has been emailed out to the parents in the district that we have email addresses for, FYI.
