CHINA SPRING, Texas — Members of the China Spring ISD community got to see and hear why the district leaders are looking into switching to a four-day school week calendar for the first time on Monday, Feb. 13.
Dr. Marc Faulkner and other administrators presented the concept to a large, curious crowd in the China Spring Elementary School cafeteria. Those in attendance included teachers, staff, parents, school board members and even some students.
Dr. Faulkner told the crowd there are numerous reasons behind the consideration of switching to the four-day week, including "challenges his team has been monitoring for a couple years."
He said some of the benefits of making the switch include improving staff recruitment and retention, addressing struggling absence rates and giving teachers the time needed to do their job.
There were dozens of educators in attendance for the presentation Monday. Many spoke to the crowd about the proposed calendar, providing a testimony about how they feel towards the teaching industry and how the switch could help them.
"All of these teachers that are in here, they teach your kids every single day," one educator said. "Changing the structure of the week, we're still going to teach them the same amount of minutes, we're still going to bust our butts each and every day as we do right now for your kids."
The teachers said they spend extra time outside of school hours and on the weekend for lesson planning, grading, etc. The district is attempting to address that issue by making one or two of the Friday's in the proposed four-day calendar as work/collaboration days for staff.
Attendees asked district leaders questions about meals, after school activities, transportation and how the calendar could impact students enrolled in certain programs of the district.
The four-day school week is only being considered for the 2023-2024 school year as the school board has to address the calendar every single year.
The proposed four-day calendar for the upcoming school year would have 10 less school days than the district has in the current school calendar, that's according to a paper passed out at the presentation. Administrators also said students would be in school around 30 minutes longer than they are currently. There would also be no early release days planned in the four-day calendar.
Dr. Faulkner pointed out that the proposed calendar would still meet the state's instructional minute requirement of 75,600 minutes. He did say the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring breaks would be similar in length to prior school years.
The China Spring ISD Superintendent recognized his district would be joining a larger initiative of schools switching to the four-day week, but says now is the time that works for his district and they need to get ahead of the curve.
"It is coming to Central Texas," Dr. Faulkner told the crowd. "It is coming to Texas very fast and it really just only benefits us to be a pioneer meaning on the front end of it. If this happens across the state of Texas like it's going to, and we joined because everybody else does -- it doesn't give us any benefit. There's still no reason for teachers to want to come be somewhere that has anything different. It doesn't set us apart."
Since the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, Dr. Faulkner said his district has lost nine classroom teachers and seven support staff as they all chose to get out of the industry. The nationwide teacher shortage has hit China Spring ISD and district leaders say the proposed four-day school week calendar could reverse that.
District leaders will be holding another presentation about the proposed calendar on Feb. 22. They will also be uploading more information and answering questions about the concept on the district's website.
Other districts, such as Academy ISD, have also considered the change, and the possibility of a four-day schedule has become popular in many places around the state, especially in smaller or more rural districts.