Cutting Class on Fridays to Cut School Budgets
By JODI WILGOREN
EDGEMONT, S.D. - Short $240,000 in a $1.4 million budget, the first thing the leaders of the Edgemont School District did was combine the middle school and high school, eliminating three teachers and a principal.
Next they dropped the gifted program, chopped the guidance counselor's hours in half, ended full-time kindergarten and recruited volunteers to coach track and wrestling.
Now, they are cutting Fridays.
"For us it's a matter of keeping the school open, having a community with a school that's worth going to," said Susan Humiston, a mother of four and president of Edgemont's five-member school board, which also gave up its $50-per-meeting stipend. "I think we have cut as deep as we can cut and still have a school I'll send my kids to."
In the fall, this tiny district of 200 students here in the Black Hills, along with nearby Hot Springs, will join about 100 rural districts nationwide using a four-day school week, adding minutes to each class to make up some of the time.
With at least 15 states sharply reducing education spending this spring, the radical-sounding four-day week, last tried in the energy crisis in the 1970's, is back. In Colorado, 36 of 180 districts have gone to four days, with 20 of 48 districts in Wyoming, and a smattering in Arizona, Louisiana, Utah and here in South Dakota. About 20 districts in eight states, including some in the Minneapolis suburbs and in Florida, Nebraska and South Carolina, have considered the approach this year. Several legislatures, including those in California, Arizona and Arkansas, have recently passed laws to allow for the shorter week.
Drawn to the short week for financial reasons, several districts said they stuck with it only after discovering hidden benefits: better attendance and morale; less time lost to extracurricular activities, teacher training and doctor's appointments; and longer class periods. But others abandoned the idea because of complaints from working parents, concerns over elementary students' exhaustion and the realization that cost savings were minimal. The short week reduces some transportation costs, but not personnel costs, which make up 80 percent of a typical district's expenses.
The new schedule runs counter to the national trend of trying to improve student achievement by extending the school day, week and year. Already, most schools require far fewer days than their counterparts in Europe and Asia.
"It's backwards," said Ruy Teixeira, who has been studying changes in the school calendar as a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning Washington research organization. "It's definitely moving in exactly the wrong direction, so one hopes it won't catch on." As for the notion that less might be more, Diane Ravitch, a conservative education historian, said the four-day districts were "pretending there's a pedagogical explanation for what is really cost-cutting."
"If you follow that logic, you should only have school one day a week," she said sarcastically.
Administrators here and in Hot Springs, 24 miles to the east, admit that if they had the money, they would keep school open into the evenings and through the summer, rather than shut down one day a week. But they expressed confidence that the new schedule would make everyone more wary of wasting time.
Little research has been done, but experts have documented increased attendance, higher morale, and fewer disciplinary problems in four-day schools. From the few papers that have been published, there appears to be no measurable effect on student achievement.
In Custer, a 1,000-student district 40 miles north of here that changed its calendar in 1995, student participation in activities has jumped and standardized test scores have risen slightly, though no one can confirm a correlation. The district saves about $70,000 a year, mostly on busing. "The students in the hallways are happy," said Tim Creal, Custer's superintendent.
Here in Edgemont, a town of 906 surrounded by bison and buffalo ranches, next year's bells will be at 7:50 a.m. and 3:38 p.m., rather than 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Lunch shrinks from an hour to 30 minutes. Officials predict elementary students will get up to 80 more hours of instruction, while those in grades 7 through 12 will lose about 10 hours, as the district moves from 172 days to 151.
Edgemont's business manager, Barbara Little, is only counting on a $10,000 savings - but even that is significant, she said, in such a small district with such a big budget gap.
Teachers are thrilled to gain minutes in each class period, particularly in hands-on subjects like chemistry and home economics. "I'm just really looking forward to being able to get in all the things I want to do every day," said Doreen Schultz, Edgemont's third-grade teacher. "As the kids get tired, there's a lot of activity-based things you can do."
Students are split, eager for an extra day off, but dreading longer classes with more homework.
"It gets tiring going to school five days straight," said Jacob Lively, 18, an Edgemont junior. But Robert Pritchard, 16, a junior in Hot Springs, said that "sitting at your desk for like an hour is going to get kind of tiring."
Perhaps the biggest challenge is what to do with the children on Fridays.
In Hot Springs, where final approval of the plan is expected in June, the district will have 147 days instead of 175, and expects to save $17,000 on busing alone. Deann Arneson, a single mother of six, said she would put her grade-school-age children in day care on Fridays.
"I think it's a better idea than a lot of other things they tossed around," said Ms. Arneson, an administrator at a Veterans Affairs hospital. "I don't want academics cut. I don't want extracurriculars cut. I don't want busing cut."
Instead, Fridays.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/09/education/09SCHO.html> -- Yoshie
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