Olfen School District In Texas Approves 4-Day School Week; Other Districts Interested In The Idea

A small school district in Texas has approved a four-day school week. This is good news for many parents, students and teachers who have been wishing for this type of school schedule.

According to TODAY, the Olfen school district is the first district in Texas to take advantage of the new state law that gives schools the right to set their own school calendar. An additional 25 minutes of school is added to the four school days (Monday to Thursday) for all students.

The attendance on Fridays -- scheduled for tutoring and other academic enrichment activities -- is optional for parents who still want their children to attend school on that day. Teachers and staff still have to report to work on Fridays and school transportation is still available five days a week.

"When I saw that it was almost impossible for us to provide additional or after-school tutoring, I figured this would be a way to implement some kind of way to help those kids who needed it and the plan evolved from there," Olfen Superintendent Gabriel Zamora told TODAY. Zamora is hoping that the surrounding communities will provide useful extracurricular activities such as sports and art craft activities for children on Fridays.

This change was made possible by a new law in Texas that allows schools to record instruction time in minutes, instead of days. The state requirement is a minimum of 75,600 minutes of instruction time per school year while Olfen's new schedule will provide 77,000 minutes for one school year.

Zamora further explained the pros of the new schedule for teachers. "Their payback is going to be on Fridays, after they finish the tutoring, because they'll have the opportunity to do their grading, to do lesson plans, enter grades into the computers," he explained. "Those are things that teachers, especially in small school districts, rarely have the opportunity to do in the day. It's something they end up doing after schools or even on weekends."

Other school districts are also interested in adopting the four-day school week. But according to Zamora, every district has different needs and that is why each district should carefully assess what schedule is best for them. Better student and teacher morale, attendance improvement, better academic quality and reduction in financial costs are some of the benefits of a four-day school week, according to Seattle Pi.