Colorado school district introduces 4-day weeks to cut costs

Do you dislike Monday? We need to consider moving to Colorado State. The school district of Centennial ceased school on Monday and replaced it with a school week of four weeks.

However, the attitude of the Garfield style is not the reason why School District 27J in the outskirts of Denver decided. This district serves 18,000 students in Brighton, Business City, Henderson, Thornton and Aurora. And I believe that shorter weeks will reduce the cost by about 1 million dollars in the first year.

Since there is no class on Monday, the school district only pays for school buses and substitutes faculty members within 4 days of the week.

District public relations officer Tracy L. Rudnick told CNBC Make It that these savings will increase over time as managers find new ways to improve efficiency.

"[1 million] is just a small part of the overall operating budget, but we hope to achieve additional savings year by year as we move in this direction," Rudnick said. "We were able to set up a counselor at each elementary school and launch our One-2-Web program, which will provide Chromebooks for all high school and high school students."

In a statement Chris Fiedler, in a statement, confirmed that this decision is heavily influenced by the economic reality of the region and the need to attract and maintain teachers in the area.

"In our economic reality, we are allocating our resources (including our time use) to our students and the most important priorities for their learning, even more strategic "He wrote." "Preparing for tomorrow will start with the best education and learning of the day, attracting, maintaining and fostering the best teachers and support staff is necessary for our mission to fulfill."

According to Rudnick, 27J is one of the most fund-deficient school districts in the Denver Metro area and it is difficult to secure excellent teachers. "We have experienced it over the years when we lost more than 15% of our teachers because they can earn over $ 10,000 in the neighborhood," she explained.

In fact, in April, thousands of Colorado teachers came out of the classroom and protested the low wages and low education funds.

The school district can save some money through the new program, but parents of the infant may need to spend more on child care. In the school district, since my parents and my family work on Monday, I plan to offer full-day child rearing of $ 30 per person per day on Monday.

Switching to this timetable, the school district will save money. According to the Colorado State Department of Education transportation and food costs are cut by about 20%, not to open the school every day to reduce public utilities and labor costs, saving additional costs. There are a lot of interested teachers who think that they are willing to work for 4 days in many employment trade fairs reported for each region. Many teachers quote extra time to keep up with extra benefits. Teacher income is not affected by change as class time does not change. Given the lower grade teacher, this is important.

In Colorado, 31 out of 176 school districts in the state use school weeks of 4 days a week. These school districts are usually remote areas and are rural areas with fewer than 500 students. Due to the challenge of implementing such a schedule for parents, administrators, and even some teachers, part of the school district in Colorado state does not use an alternative 4-day timetable but a traditional timetable came back. Indeed, many schools provide services throughout the year to respond to changes in community needs.

At present, there are surprisingly many schools across the country that are mainly operated on a 4-day schedule to reduce transport and utility costs; for example, in Colorado, 30% of state school districts work for 4 weeks I have a week. However, as far as evidence is mainly anecdotes, it is unknown how the compressive week may affect student achievement. As a result, D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University and Mary Beth Walker of Georgia State University analyze the results and outcomes of fourth and fifth graders in the Colorado state student evaluation program to solve the problem I decided to.