Alberton looks to a 4-day school week

In response to a serious lack of funding, Alberton School District is considering some extreme measures to help cut the cost of operating the school.

Last Monday night, the Alberton School Board held a meeting with parents to discuss the possibility of switching the school over to a four-day-per-week operating schedule. The proposed schedule requires students to be in school longer each day and gives them Friday off.

"There is no doubt that we are up against monetary troubles," trustee Steve Piippo said.

According to Alberton Superintendent James Baldwin, the school is around $125,000 short on next year's budget.

"We're looking for every possible way to squeeze as much out of the budget as we can," Piippo said.

Baldwin said that if the school switched to four longer operating days, it could save around $50,000 by decreasing the electric bills for the school buildings, cutting back on the amount of food served by the cafeteria, and cutting around 2,000 miles yearly off school bus routes.

The main reason for the lack of funding in the school is the decline in student numbers, according to Baldwin. When Baldwin began his job as superintendent in 1998, he said there were over 100 children in the elementary school, which now teaches only 70 students.

While switching to a four-day week is not the ideal situation, the school board pointed out that there are many benefits to a four-day schedule.

"Every school that has implemented the four-day week has actually improved," Piippo said.

The school board drew on statistics from other schools that have switched to a four-day schedule to point out the benefits.

"This is not a tradeoff with respect to quality of education," Piippo said.

Schools with a four-day week have a 20 percent lower absenteeism and truancy rate than before. Also, students get longer sessions with their teachers, improving the quality of the lessons, said Piippo

"I have not seen any school that has had the four-day school week and gone back," Piippo said.

Piippo said he also drew on advice from his father, who applied a four-day week schedule as a school superintendent in Chalice, Idaho.

"If you want to have a scapegoat, you can throw tomatoes at me," Piippo said.

This system is currently implemented in Victor schools with good results, according to Baldwin. Victor Superintendent Orville Getz was going to attend the meeting to discuss the system with parents, but was unable to because of illness.

The Alberton School Board considered making this change two years ago, but the idea was tabled.

"Our budget problems have made it rise back up to the surface," Piippo said.

The parents who attended Monday's meeting had many concerns about how the change might be implemented. Some parents were concerned that they would not be able to watch their children on the Fridays when students had off.

"You do the same things with your kids that you would do on any other Friday off," Piippo said.

School board members also suggested that this would provide students with the opportunity to get a part-time job, spend more time with their families, or become more involved in the community.

Some parents said that they were worried about an increase in vandalism and other problems if students had every Friday off. Piippo said that while the community may face those problems, it was not an issue they could not handle.

"This institution is not a daycare," Piippo said. "There is a tendency of many people to think that it is the job of this school to watch their kids."

Baldwin said that the students that were a behavior risk were few and far between and that these students would be misbehaving whether they had an extra day off or not.

"I don't want anybody to think that we have a bunch of orangutans running around here. We have great kids," Baldwin said.

Parent Julie Bunton was concerned that the change would make things harder on kids with learning disabilities that had to spend time outside of class with a specialist. She said that it is hard on these kids socially because they have to leave the class to spend time with these specialists.

"My major concern is for kids with disabilities," Bunton said.

Piippo argued that this program would actually provide a better quality learning environment by lengthening the time spent on each lesson. "The actual contact time with the teacher doesn't change," Piippo said.

The final decision on this change will be made at the Feb. 11 school board meeting.

"We have not decided to do this. We're here to hear your concerns," Piippo said. "If there are significant problems that will be generated by this, I want to know."