Southern Missouri school district to go to four-day week beginning in the fall

BROSELEY, Mo. — After much discussion, the Twin Rivers School Board voted unanimously at its Thursday night meeting to accept a four-day school week.

The board was presented with three calendar options that had been organized by faculty for the upcoming school year, each calendar varying in the start and stop times, as well as calendar days.

District officials think this move will help recruit and retain employees.

"Whatever we can do to retain and attract qualified candidates," said board member Jenny Hester, who was sworn in at the beginning of Thursday's meeting. "I do have concerns, but I think it is a critical time and we have to do something that is a little out of the box."

Board member Billy Watson said he hopes the new schedule will help keep teachers in the district.

"One of my worries is if we take and put this into effect, it has to help teacher retention. If we as a district are five days and it gets to where everyone around us is four days, I'm afraid we're going to lose a lot of good teachers to neighboring districts," Watson said.

"This is going to be an incentive. If we do try it, and it is a colossal failure, can we not go back and say we tried it, it didn't work for us," Hester said.

The board members agreed it was something that could be changed with the next calendar year, if it was found to not be a fit for the district.

Some of the concerns mentioned at a previous meeting regarding the new four-day schedule were early start times and the possibility of some students getting on the bus before 6 a.m.

"It will be dark when they leave or dark when they come home," one board member said.

Teachers in attendance at the meeting were unanimous in their stance students were seemingly more compliant and teachable in the morning hours. Afternoon sports schedules were also mentioned as a concern because time added to the end of the school day would potentially lead to some students missing more curriculum to attend sporting events.

A calendar for the new school schedule has not been approved.