A four-day school week in some rural districts is getting a thumbs up from parents and administrators, who say the plan saves money and keeps students in class.
But the practice has been tried and abandoned by other districts, where officials say the program tires students out.The plan involves shortened lunches and up to two hours of additional instruction Mondays through Thursdays. Fridays and the weekends are reserved for extracurricular and athletic activities.
Many parents, students and teachers were wary when the program was first proposed, but have since become advocates.
"I give it a thumbs up," said Helen Jenkins, a mother of seven with a son at Piute High School.
Twenty-seven schools and 3,900 students in Utah are on the four-day schedule.
That includes all schools in the Beaver, North Summit and Garfield districts and some elementary and secondary schools in Box Elder, Kane, Piute and Washington districts.
To accommodate the schedule, administrators cut the regular lunch period, reduced time between classes and added up to two hours to the traditional 51/2-hour school day.
Students get the required 990 hours of annual instruction in 144 days, instead of 180.
North Summit, which was $15,000 in debt four years ago, moved to the plan to save money, said Superintendent Don Francom. Since then, the district has saved $100,000 in reduced transportation costs, salaries and utilities.
Park Valley Elementary in Box Elder School District is on a four-day week to improve low attendance, said district administrative assistant Richard Kimber. Parents were taking children out of school to run errands to the nearest town, Tremonton, 75 miles away.
The remainder of the districts went to the four-day week to keep students from missing class for extracurricular activities. Their rural locations often mean students must travel three or four hours for competitions, sometimes missing entire days.
Thelma Whittaker, a 27-year veteran teacher at Piute High School, said before the four-day week some students missed as many as 50 days a year for extracurricular activities.
Today, the four days are all "academics with no interruptions," she said. Athletics and other activities are restricted to Thursday nights, Fridays or Saturdays.
Not everyone is enthralled with the program. School boards in Grand and Iron counties voted this year to return to a regular schedule.
"Our high school kids weren't getting the mileage academically that we thought they should," said Iron Superintendent DeeEl Stapley.
A 61/2-hour day at Parowan High School, the district's only four-day school, proved too much for students.
"That last hour was pretty tough," Stapley said. "Teachers found it hard to motivate students and get them going."
At least 13 states operate some schools on a four-day schedule, and its popularity is growing, said Office of Education researcher Richard Keene.
Schools began moving to a four-day week to save money during the energy crisis in the 1970s.
Later, the communities noticed other benefits, he said.
"It doesn't cut into student performances," Keene said. "If anything it enhances it."