Four-day school week? Policymakers have been eyeing the four-day school week as a way to cut education costs. There have been mixed results where the schedule has been adopted.

• Author: Durr, Greta

With promises of a 20 percent reduction in overhead and transportation costs, the four-day school week is growing more attractive to legislators seeking to cut education costs--especially in energy, transportation and classified personnel salaries. But while some states are looking at the four-day school week as a way to save money or as a creative option for rural areas, others have found it impractical.

The four-day week offers the same amount of class time in fewer days. Mostly these plans have been used by rural school districts and the savings are not always dramatic. There are other factors, however, that influence whether they are successful.

Custer School District in rural South Dakota adopted the four-day a-week calendar in 1995 to reduce its annual budget by approximately $70,000. The savings weren't as much as estimated, but a school survey found that the switch boosted morale, reduced absenteeism, decreased the need for substitute teachers, and led to a boom in participation in extracurricular activities. The survey also indicated that teachers were covering more academic content than they had under the traditional five-day calendar.

But the idea didn't work in Utah where a modified school week pilot program ended a year early because the schools involved reported only moderate or no actual savings, as well as scheduling complications. Some districts in the pilot went to four-and-a-half-day weeks after two years, which cut into savings on transportation and heat.

The legislation allowing the program required that extracurricular activities like school sports, dances, plays and speech meets be scheduled on Thursday nights, Fridays or Saturdays so students would not have to travel on a regular school day.

"Most schools opted out," says Steve Laing, state school superintendent. "There are still a couple of schools that would like to do it, but not because they're planning on any savings." Laing explained that, for these schools, the benefits of the modified week (better morale, decreased absenteeism, reduced need for substitutes) meant more to the communities than the money they saved.

Oregon has two laws that deal with shortened school schedules and both have come into play as districts struggle to survive the worst budget deficit in 20 years. After Oregonians defeated a measure in January that would have increased income taxes for three years to prevent $310 million in cuts to schools and other programs, schools are looking at...