On Mondays, Paly lacks productivity. Students drag their heavy backpacks from class to class for short lectures that barely cover material, enduring seven consecutive and pointless periods. Once they arrive home, students are already exhausted on the first day of a new week.
Instead of our current five-school-days-perweek schedule, PAUSD should implement four day school weeks and three day weekends to adjust for the current teacher shortage, provide more time to students to complete assignments and also allow much-needed downtime to explore out-of-school interests.
To account for the lost instructional time for a four-day week, Paly could add 35 minutes to each school day, and bring back the 8:30 a.m. start time. While the district unilaterally adjusted the start time of the high schools to 9 a.m. in 2021 in what they said was an effort to improve the mental and physical health of students, starting earlier allows students to attend after-school extracurricular activities while it is still light outside. And though many students are opposed to waking up early, having Mondays off would provide students with extra time to sleep and relax before each new school week.
Transforming Monday into a weekend day would also assist in preserving the energy levels of students throughout the week through fewer, but more productive, periods to study. Currently, the Monday schedule puts students through seven 45-minute periods with lessons that don’t cover substantive material –– and with late start Mondays, periods fall to only 35 minutes of learning.
A four-day week also helps solve the teacher shortage the state faces by making the job more lucrative. If being a teacher requires only four days of work, more people will be incentivized to get teaching credentials and apply for jobs.
In schools in Missouri where the teacher shortage has deeply affected schools, a four-day schedule has helped make teaching a more lucrative job choice and opened up more opportunities for students. Because PAUSD is also a well-paying school district, adding a more lenient job schedule might help solve the current teacher shortage.
For elementary and middle school students, childcare becomes a problem for parents during four-day weeks because they can’t leave their children at home when they go off to work. One method used by schools in the Midwest is a subsidy given out by the school every Monday in order to pay for childcare programs or kid’s day clubs.
Having four-day school weeks would increase efficiency for teaching students, help solve the teacher shortage and allow students to explore their passions outside of school with their newfound free time.
