The KPBSD ad hoc committee commissioned last month by the board of education and charged with investigating the possibility of migrating the district to a four-day school week will meet this Wednesday at 1:00 P.M. in the Betty J Glick Assembly Chambers. This constitutes the first meeting held by the committee which will begin researching the benefits and challenges of implementing the alternative schedule.
Discussions on advancing the idea of a four-day school week have been around in the district for years, but took a big step forward in June of this year when the school board hosted a planning session intended to facilitate a conversation on the viability of such a schedule. Superintendent Clayton Holland made it clear at that time that the purpose of the planning session was to just have a discussion on the topic, not make any decisions. Several ideas were tossed around during the session, ranging from how to even implement a four-day school week, to the way such a schedule might impact the willingness of new teachers to come to the district, to whether or not school day hours would be extended to accommodate for the shorter week.
Then, during last month’s Board of Education meeting, the ad hoc committee was officially commissioned.
According to Board of Education Vice President, Jason Tauriainen, who chairs the temporary committee, this concept has been on his radar for quite some time. “I am very thankful that we finally got the next step in this. This has been sort of a passion project of mine, one of the things I ran on over six years ago and so it’s been much nagging from me and it’s finally here,” Tauriainen said during the December school board meeting. “To be able to go to the next step and start bringing forth more evidence and reasons to whether we should move towards this or not. So I look forward to working with this committee.”
Over the course of a series of meetings, members of the committee will work through a predetermined list of questions to determine the viability of shifting schools to four-day weeks, and then present their research and findings at the Board of Education meeting in July.
Guiding questions for the committee are:
- How will this affect district costs and savings?
- What is the effect on quality of life?
- How does it affect student attendance?
- How does it affect negotiations and what are the Unions’ input on a four-day school week?
- How is the community involved?
- What are potential student outcomes?
- Could KPBSD pilot this in a particular school/area of the district?
- What information can be gathered from other districts in the country that have implemented a four-day
school week?
The temporary committee will be comprised of two members of the Board of Education (Tauriainen and Tim Daugharty), KPBSD Director of Secondary Education Tony Graham, Director of Human Resources Nate Crabtree, KPEA President LaDawn Druce, KPESA President Susanna Litwiniak, and KPAA President Pete Swanson.
Currently one district in Alaska, the Southeast Island School District, uses the four-day school week model.