With many smaller schools around the Kirksville area switching to four days a week of school and other bigger schools considering the switch for next year, the question is will Kirksville do the same?
According to Claudette Riley of the Springfield News Leader, 128 Missouri school districts have switched to 4 day school weeks. These schools now make up an astonishing 25 percent of all Missouri school districts. Around Kirksville we have seen the change in a bunch of smaller schools like Brashear, Novinger, La Plata, Schuyler County, and Scotland County schools. Milan also just joined the list of schools to go to 4 days a week and they will start the new trend next school year. Bigger schools like Macon are also thinking about possibly switching to the new schedule.
So why are these schools switching? Well, the major issue is staffing. According to Jon Turner, a Missouri State University Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, smaller rural school districts are struggling to compete with larger school districts in their funding and benefits. Bigger schools are taking teachers away from smaller schools resulting in major problems for these smaller rural schools. So they attract them by providing an extra day off, while still maintaining around the same number of hours of school.
So, will Kirksville make the change? Most likely not. As long as Kirksville maintains higher salaries for their staff they will still attract more teachers into working at the school district. It will have to make the change from other bigger schools switching to 4 days a week for schools like Kirksville to see the benefits, and switch to shorter weeks.
By John Behnen