Four-day week studied for local students

RITZVILLE — Students, teachers, staff and parents in the Lind-Ritzville School District may have the chance for a shorter school week under a proposal being circulated by the district.

Superintendent Don Vanderholm said the change could affect the student body of 566 and 104 staff in both towns.

Student currently attend classes Monday through Friday. Under the proposal, students would get an equal amount of instruction time under, but instruction would take place over four days instead of five.

“Early last year, I started getting inquiries from staff, from parents, from community members, and it just kept building,” Vanderholm said. “I think it hit the news a little more since the state raised the number of districts that could apply for the waiver, so I just got more and more inquiries.”

Vanderholm said he finally told his staff, “If you guys want to look into this, let’s present it to the School Board.”

“That step was taken with the incremental intention of asking permission to study the idea.

“Then I felt, if it was going to happen, it needed to be a grassroots movement, and I really wasn’t going to lead it.”

Vanderholm said some teachers organized a committee this fall. The group put together two community presentations, one in Ritzville, the other in Lind,

Vanderholm said the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has a waiver application that would eventually approve the five-to-four-day adjustment.

“It’s a rather lengthy waiver, and you have to fill out the reasons why you want to do this four-day week,” Vanderholm said. “It’s only for districts under 1,000 students, and there are only 30 open slots right now. The legislature actually sets how many get to do this.”

Vanderholm said community input is a necessary component of the application process, and that has been started with the Ritzville and Lind forums.

Teachers and staff have submitted 74 positive responses for the proposal, “which is probably twice what we’ve ever had in any survey,” Vanderholm said, “so people seem to be leaping on this. It’s more of a topic people are interested in.”

There have been concerns the longer school days might tire younger students.

“Other districts have put an extra recess in,” Vanderholm said. “Their instructional hours are much lower,” he said of the younger students.

The assumption might be that students would love having an extra day off during the week.

“That’s what’s been shared,” Vanderholm said. “Most of my research has been from talking with other school superintendents, who are doing this, have done it.”

Vanderholm said there is some impression that school districts might prefer if your district made the change first, rather than them.

“Some of the districts thinking about this are in our sports league, and a few are wondering if we’re going to do it,” he said.

A good result might be the ability for schools to shift Friday sports schedules.

“Because middle schools do a lot of games on Fridays, a lot of the athletic directors have talked about making start times at 4:30 p.m. instead of 4:00, because it’s already hard for parents to get there. It would be nice if they did that, because the kids tend to leave more in the middle of the day, or early afternoon, for games.”

Valderholm said any instruction shift would require detailed union negotiations.

“Every district has to come up with a memorandum of understanding,” Vanderholm said. “I meet with all the unions every month, and every one of the unions said they’re very supportive of working with me so that its fits their classification.”