Forest Country News

The next academic year will see several public school districts hold classes for four days a week instead of five, per a report from Austin NBC affiliate KXAN.

KXAN reported that up to 60 districts as of Tuesday, March 7 have elected to implement a shortened school week while others will devote a part of the year to four-day weeks.

The changes were made possible by a piece of legislation which changed the length of the school day that lawmakers passed in 2015, the station reported. 

Districts must teach for at least 75,600 minutes instead of 180 days.

Officials hope four-day school weeks would properly address teacher turnover, according to KXAN.

Citing a report put together by Gov. Greg Abbott’s Teacher Vacancy Task Force, Tyler CBS affiliate KYTX reported that the Lone Star State currently occupies the 28th spot on the list of states that pay their teachers the most.

Rains Independent School District (RISD) Superintendent Jennifer Johnson told the station that her school board decided to shorten the school week in response to the glaring statistic.

"One of the things that we struggle with is being able to pay our teachers,” Johnson said. “So we were looking for a creative way to entice retention and recruitment of teachers."

Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate WFAA reported that most teachers statewide, however, believe the change won’t solve their problems.

Per WFAA, a random survey conducted by the Charles Butt Foundation in 2022 revealed that 77% of teachers said they had strongly considered leaving the classroom for good, a huge increase from 58% when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Approximately 12% of the state’s teachers actually departed the profession before the commencement of the 2021-2022 school year, according to figures from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the station reported.

“We are losing people at alarming rates,” an unidentified educator with the Little Elm Independent School District (LEISD) said in the report.