WESTFIELD — Across the country and throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as school budgets are stretched ever tighter, a radical idea is gaining momentum in small towns and regional school districts: shortening the school week.
In the Mohawk Trail Regional School District, which serves the Franklin County communities of Ashfield, Buckland, Charlemont, Colrain, Hawley, Heath, Plainfield, Rowe, and Shelburne, Superintendent Michael Buoniconti received the blessing of his district’s School Committee yesterday to begin seriously researching the matter.
According to Buoniconti, about 300 districts all over the country have already adopted the measure in an effort to save on transportation and utility costs.
Adding an extra hour and a half to the school day would be needed for students to get the same amount of classroom time, but there would be extensive savings, and in many of the districts that have already adopted the shortened week, increases in staff attendance and improved test scores have already been shown.
Opponents of the measure list as concerns the longer school day, the effects on families, and a possible loss of pay for bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and other employees.
Gateway Superintendent Dr. David Hopson has been a proponent of the four day school week for a decade.
When he began serving as acting Superintendent in 2003, Hopson wrote a letter to then-State Representative Daniel F. Keenan detailing his stance on the matter and requesting support for legislation to alter the measurement of educational contact time.
“If this legislation is approved, schools like Gateway will be able to examine alternative school calendars… to save money without further decimating classrooms,” he wrote.
The district was experiencing severe financial hardships at that time, seeing reductions in its Chapter 70 state funding, regional transportation, and a painfully slow reimbursement on building projects from the School Building Assistance Bureau (SBAB).
This perfect storm of fiscal distress led Hopson to spearhead the motion for the shortened school week currently being investigated in Buckland.
“We began to look at this option in January as a cost saving measure,” Hopson wrote in 2003. “In some preliminary research, we have found that school districts, over 100 to date, that have adopted the four-day week not only save money, but also see no reduction in student performance on standardized testing.”
When the district began seeking a waiver for the day requirement from the state that year, then-Superintendent Dr. Donald Nicoletti sought to increase the length of the school day to compensate for the lost day, a measure that Hopson believed would enable the district to reduce its transportation costs without being forced to make further cuts, as it had already been forced to cut over $1.3 million from its budget by laying off over 25 professional staff, over 10 support staff, and three principals, while simultaneously reducing the hours of 12 additional staff members.
“Without either legislation or a waiver from the Department of Education allowing us to complete our required hours in less than 180 days, we will be forced to further reduce our teaching staff, which will negatively impact student learning,” Hopson concluded, a sentiment he sticks by to this day.
“I certainly support Mike in his efforts to research this potential to maintain educational opportunities in an era of ever-decreasing resources,” he said. “And would welcome any movement by the DESE to provide districts the flexibility to be creative in meeting state and federal mandates.”
Other rural districts such as Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional, which covers four fewer towns than Gateway and about 150 fewer square miles than Mohawk, are less receptive to shortening their school weeks.
“It’s really not something we’ve considered,” said STGR Superintendent Dr. Jay Barry. “We only have three towns and we don’t have the same kind of geography (as Gateway or Mohawk). Apart from Greenfield and Frontier Regional, Mohawk covers most of Franklin County.”
Barry said he would be hesitant to support a move to a four day week, despite the potential for considerable transportation savings, and he is skeptical that the shortened week improves student performance.
“Those are two big questions. I’m not convinced that we save enough to make it worthwhile,” he said, adding that suddenly instituting a three-day weekend throws a monkey wrench into the traditional structure of the American family. “You have to be careful of the impact this would have on families. The five day work week is a societal institution, and (a shortened school week) would mean big changes.”
