Zachary Hladek

 The Friday sun rays peek through the blinds and the birds outside start singing. As the student slowly wakes up, a smile dawns on their face as they sink back into bed, enjoying another hour of sleep. This scenario may become a reality in the near future as the 4-day school week is becoming increasingly popular across the U.S., with about 900 districts adopting the new schedule. This phenomena is spreading fast to schools all over the country in order to combat student and teacher absences.

Teachers have been leaving the workforce in massive numbers, with 6,006 vacancies across the state of Florida in 2022 alone according to the Florida Education Association. During the Back to School Job Fair for Broward County, there were 1,300 job openings needing to be filled. These teacher shortages lead to schools having classrooms with no teacher to teach at the start of the year. To fix this dilemma, many schools are turning to taking a day off the normal school week. This in turn is believed to solve the problem of not having enough teachers by taking a whole day of classes off the schedule. 

Schools that use the 4-day schedule also tend to have high absence rates. Chiles Academy in Orlando, Florida is a school with this common theme. Chiles Academy had a high absence rate post schedule change, so their solution was changing to four days instead of five. This in turn lowered absence rates because students didn’t have school Friday. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, studies have been shown that student attendance is improved with a four day school week as it leaves more time to be involved in extracurricular activities. However, the NCSL also states that having no fifth day can pose a challenge to families who can’t find affordable care on that extra day and to those who are food insecure. 

AICE General Paper teacher Nancy Altimore explained that moving to a four day schedule would cause information overload during the day and lead to students not being able to fully understand the skills before moving on. “Students would not be able to learn the skill during the amount of time in the day given. There is a certain amount of work needing to be done by the end of the year and cutting off a day would cause students to not fully understand the material,” said Altimore. 

Time also plays a big part in the 4-day schedule. According to OnFocus, both parents and students say that they prefer the four days of school as shown by 85 percent in favor. Aaron Santiago, a sophomore, agrees that a 4-day schedule would be beneficial. “There would be more time for homework. It helps your body and mind relax, and it also would take away stress,”  Santiago said.

So will this come to Charter? According to our principal, Mr. Bayer, it was proposed 20 years ago to change to four days.”At the time, the teachers were open to the idea, but the parents were not. So if the State reconsiders how they measure student ‘seat time’ we probably will stick to the model we have,” Mr. Bayer said.