Will Haviland schools reopen with a four-day school week come next August? That question will be answered shortly after students and staff return from Christmas break early next month. After months of research and discussion it comes down to an up or down vote by the Board of Education the night of January 12 according to USD 474 Superintendent John Wyrick.
And while the vote itself will be a simple, short-lived procedure, arriving at that point has been anything but.
Wyrick remembers going to a Monday through Thursday schedule arising as a possible means of saving money at his board’s retreat last summer.
“We were trying to find ideas to help us maintain high student achievement in a time of declining enrollment,” Principal Clint Corby said recently. As Wyrick explains it, “Kids equal money” as in level of state financing being dependent on the number of full time students. With K-12 enrollment at Haviland having dipped from 185 students five years ago to a current count of 139.5, cutting costs becomes an increasing priority each year at most, if not all schools in smaller, rural communities. Haviland is no exception.
But as Wyrick, Corby and others of the district discovered in their research into the matter this past fall, cost cutting was soon forgotten as the primary motivation for going to the shorter week.
“All we heard when we visited schools that are already on the four-day week was positives,” Corby said. “All of them told us kids get more family time and there’s a higher morale in the school with the shorter week. Plus it helps with the recruitment and retention of teachers and seems to bring higher academic achievement.”
Wyrick pointed out that with the majority of athletic activities taking place on Friday it makes sense to free that day up for students.
“Today (Friday, December 12) our girls are playing in a tournament in Larned this afternoon, but if it was a normal away game on a Friday, our kids would leave school early to ride the bus there and then get home around midnight tonight,” Wyrick said. “Then they get up Saturday and have chores to do, leaving Sunday as their only day off for the week. With this (four-day week) they have Friday to do those chores and other obligations, giving them more of a weekend. It’s also less stressful for teachers to have Friday off from teaching to be able to do what they need to do.”
Members of the community, board members, students and administrators took turns earlier this semester visiting four Kansas schools that have been on the four-day week at least five years, the closest of which is Ashland, a fellow member of the SPIAA League.
Ashland is currently in its sixth year of following a Monday through Thursday schedule.
Other schools visited were Dexter and Central Burden, only 15 miles apart southeast of Wichita, as well as Weskan, near the Colorado border. While both Central Burden and Weskan have been on the shorter week for five years, Dexter has been on the four-day format since 1981.
In addition to the fact-finding trips to those four schools, the district held community meetings for district patrons to hear the concept explained in detail and have opportunity to ask questions. Ashland Elementary Principal Jason Endicott was the presenter and responder at the December 1 community gathering in Mullinville, which is in a contractual agreement with Haviland, while Ashland’s Superintendent Bill Day filled the same role in a December 2 event held in Haviland.
“Both were well attended,” Corby said. “We had around 60 in Haviland and maybe 30 at Mullinville and I think the concept was well received at both events. There were no negative comments.”
Older students, according to Wyrick, can possibly address one drawback—how parents of younger children will cope with having to provide oversight of their youngsters on Fridays.
“Bill Day told us the American Cross can come in and train the junior and senior high students in babysitting,” he said. “It’s a two to three day training after which they can be certified in child care safety. It would give the older kids a chance to help out with that on Fridays. But we won’t be offering child care or babysitting on campus.”
There will, in fact, be little going on in any of the school buildings on Fridays if the board votes to move ahead with the new format.
“I’ll be in the office on Friday and the teachers can come in and work in their classroom, but other than that, there won’t be anyone there,” Wyrick said.
Shutting down on Fridays is, after all, the key to saving money, which remains one of the considerations of going to the shorter week. According to Wyrick, Haviland could expect to save between $45,000 to $55,000, or around two percent of its budget next year with the shorter week, about what he’d expected last August.
Exactly how long the school day would run in a four-day schedule is yet to be determined, as well as whether the traditional spring break would be retained. Haviland’s school day currently starts at 8:15 a.m. and ends at 3:15 p.m.
Both Dexter and Central Burden run from 8 a.m. through 3:45 p.m. and have no spring break, while Ashland and Weskan still give the week off in March with an 8 to 4 school day.
“If the board votes to go ahead with this Mr. Corby and I will work out a schedule for both 8 to 4 and 8 to 3:45,” Wyrick said. “A lot of kids go on a mission trip every spring break, so that’s a reason to keep it (spring break) and go to the longer day, but it’s just one consideration.” Wyrick made clear, however, that regardless of the length of the school day, school will still be in session the same number of hours next year as this, and that the school year will start and end at approximately the same dates.
With Cedar Vale, just 15 miles south of Dexter and sharing the same superintendent, having gone to a four-day week this year, the abbreviated format seems to be gaining in popularity. How quickly it might be taken up by Greensburg, the other school district of Kiowa County, remains to be seen.
“It’s something we very well could look at,” USD 422 Superintendent Darin Headrick said recently. “But not right now. We have enough on our plate at this point.”
Greensburg broke ground on its new $40 million facility in late October, meant to replace the campus destroyed in the May 4, 2007 tornado. Students currently attend classes on a temporary campus made up of mobile units where the elementary school formerly stood.
