4-day school weeks are growing in popularity, despite a lack of data on the effects

By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org

Northeast of the capital city of Des Moines in central Iowa, the 400-student Collins-Maxwell Community School District is one of many across the state shifting to a four-day school week.

Like many rural K-12 schools, the district has struggled to find teachers, and it sees the four-day week as a useful recruiting tool. It also wants to curb student absences, which tend to spike on Mondays and Fridays.

The district maintained its traditional five-day calendar in August and September. But from now on, with scattered exceptions, the middle school and high school in the Collins-Maxwell district will be closed on Mondays. To meet Iowa’s minimum number of instructional hours, the district will lengthen the other days during four-day weeks.

Superintendent Marc Snavely said he watched nearby schools transition to shorter weeks and was intrigued by the reports he got from his counterparts in other districts. Snavely hopes the shorter week will boost teacher morale, reduce burnout, and make the rural district more competitive with nearby districts that are larger and can offer teachers better pay.

“Ultimately, the ‘why’ behind the four-day school week came down to staff recruitment and retention,” Snavely said in an interview. “We felt being a small school district, the four-day week would allow us to better compete....