VIENNA, Mo. - The Maries R-1 School District in Vienna will not switch to a four-day school week for the 2020-21 school year, but the school board is still considering it for the 2021-22 school year or later, Superintendent Mark Parker said.
The school board has decided to continue gathering and examining information on the pros and cons, Parker said.
"We are just mainly looking to see if this is a schedule that could possibly fit into our district to help our families, our students and our school," Parker said.
The school board began discussing the possibility of a four-day school week at its November meeting. The district sent surveys to parents, teachers and students the week of Jan. 20.
The board is considering switching to a four-day school week as a way to attract and retain more teachers, Parker said.
The district has had a difficult time recruiting and retaining quality teachers over the past few years and doesn't receive enough funding to compete with larger districts, he said.
"We still think it might be a positive thing for us, but we're just not ready, I don't think, at this time," Parker said.
Parker estimates 25-30 percent of district patrons expressed concerns on the surveys, and the rest of the results were neutral or in support of the four-day week.
Parents expressed three main concerns: finding child care on the extra day off; free and reduced-price lunch students missing a day of meals; and younger children not being able to focus with a longer school day, Parker said.
The student surveys were given to children in sixth through 12th grade. Parker estimated about 5 percent of student surveys showed concerns, and the main concern was getting home later and how it would affect extracurricular activities.
The majority of teachers favor the four-day week, Parker said, but some expressed concerns about how it would affect academics.
The school board will continue to examine the four-day school week and the concerns and comments from the surveys, Parker said.
"We're looking at that to see what types of systems can we put in place if we did decide to go to that schedule - what things can we put in place to try to remedy those concerns," Parker said. "A lot of the concerns, they weren't new concerns from what I've found in the research of other school districts going to a four-day. We just need some time to research what have other districts done about this - what are some ideas that might pertain to us that maybe we can implement or look at in our research."