Five rural school districts will undergo unprecedented scrutiny of student achievement and conduct in exchange for an opportunity to hold school four days a week.
A proposal approved Friday by the Utah Board of Education establishes a five-year experiment in which Beaver, Garfield, Kane, Piute and Wayne school districts will conduct class Monday through Thursday, setting aside Thursday afternoon, Friday and Saturday for extracurricular activities. The new schedule starts next fall.The participating schools, all in the 1A sports classification in Region 15 of the Utah High School Activities Association, will undergo an annual assessment of standardized test scores and juvenile delinquency rates, as well as a detailed accounting of time out of school for activities.
Students in the participating districts will be expected to attend school a minimum of 990 hours a year, which will mean longer school days. The proposal establishes no minimum number of school days per year.
The rest of the state's students are required to attend school at least four hours a day, five days a week for a minimum of 180 days of school and 990 hours.
The state board changed the attendance standard in 1995 over concerns about time out of school for activity travel and inordinately long school days in some urban elementary schools.
In the 1997 Legislature, Rep. Tom Hatch, R-Panguitch, sponsored legislation that created the "modified school week" proposal after observing that the four-day had benefited his children.
State school board member Neola Brown, who represents the region where the schools are located, termed the proposal a "special needs arrangement."
Given the distance between similar-size schools in the region, students were out of class too much if they participated in extracurricular activities, Brown said during the state board's meeting at the Uintah Basin Applied Technology Center in Roosevelt.
"Our kids were getting home at 2 in the morning. They were expected to come to school and be motivated. It just wasn't happening," said Piute School District Superintendent Randy Johnson.
Only board member C. Grant Hurst voted against the proposal, arguing the four-day school week would dilute the students' education.
State Superintendent Scott Bean said the annual evaluation of the program will indicate whether the four-day school week works. "We're serious about this. I can assure you these two superintendents (Johnson and Garfield Superintendent Philip Blais) are serious about the academics part of this. They always have been. It's going to be scrutinized, and it is going to be public. It's going to come before the (state) board every year," Bean said.
Superintendents and school boards in each of the five districts presented letters to the state school board confirming they will take part in the pilot program established by HB341.
Johnson said he believes educators, parents and students in the five school districts are committed to demonstrating the four-day week is beneficial. "This is a pilot program. They will meet the criteria and prove it's going to work, or in five years, it won't be reapproved."
Board member Boyd Jensen said he feared the pilot project might work too well.
"My concern is, what if this is successful? What about the other districts? Are we going to say yes to them, too?" Jensen queried.
Salt Lake Superintendent Darline Robles said she will seek a waiver of the attendance rule for kindergartners, which requires they attend school five days a week. A previous request was rejected by the state board, but Robles said last week that she now has hard data to support her request. Bean said he believes the circumstances in Region 15 are unique, given geography and the agreement that all participating districts will take part in an annual evaluation.
The Garfield superintendent noted the cooperation among the schools in the region is so great that one of two private schools that compete in the region likely will observe a four-day school week as well.