Student Life

Every American spends at least 13 years of their life attending school five days a week for approximately 36 weeks out of the year. Furthermore, school is essentially the central focus of every young American’s life from around the age of five to at least the age of 18. However, in light of recent events, such as the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been a shortage of teachers in public schools. As a solution, some schools have started implementing four day workweeks and giving students and staff a three day weekend every week, in the hopes that this may increase teacher recruitment, as well as boost student attendance, and save money. 

Teacher shortages, primarily evident in public schools, have been a growing issue in the education system for decades now. However, this is a particularly difficult issue, because the job of being a teacher is one of the most important there is, yet fewer and fewer people choose to fill these shoes each year. In an effort to remedy this, mainly small schools in rural areas have been leading the push for a four day workweek in schools with the hope that it would make the job more appealing to potential applicants. As a result, “The number of teacher applications that we’ve received have gone up more than 4-fold,” Dale Herl, superintendent of the Independence, Missouri school district, told CBS News. In addition to the increase in people applying for the position of a teacher at these schools, the four day workweek has also improved employee morale, schools have also seen fewer fights and less bullying among students at these schools. 

Next to attendance as well as student and staff morale, fighting and bullying are some of the biggest and most difficult to handle issues that are plaguing public schools and discouraging attendance, especially in high schools. Moorpark High School is no different in this respect. However, in schools that have implemented a four day workweek, “Results indicate that four-day school weeks decrease per-pupil bullying incidents by approximately 39% and per-pupil fighting incidents by approximately 31%”(Morton, Emily, journals.sagepub.com). Fighting and bullying can be big distractions during school that keep students from focusing on their studies and redirect their attention to more petty issues. This is why a decrease in fighting between students could be a huge step forward for specifically high schools. 

However, not all the effects of a four day workweek in schools are good. For example, a 2023 study of children in elementary schools showed that children who attended kindergarten four days a week scored lower on third-grade tests than children who had gone to kindergarten five days a week. This is particularly important because the minds of children are rapidly developing at this age, so it is detrimental that they get a sufficient education, or else the effects of this may bleed into other aspects of their lives in the future. Additionally, the test scores in math and language arts of students in grades three through eight decreased among students attending schools that operate an average of 29.95 hours per week.

In the end, there are benefits and drawbacks of four day work weeks in schools, but there are also benefits and drawbacks of schools that stick to a five day work week, so it really comes down to what issues the school board deems to be most important in the bigger picture.