The Anna Independent School District (AISD) school board recently announced that it approved of moving to four-day weeks for the upcoming 2023-24 school year.
According to WFAA, the North Texas school board approved the brand-new school structure this past Friday during a board meeting.
AISD says that the recently introduced four-day school week will be a three-year pilot.
The decision to implement the four-day instructional weeks came following a survey that the AISD school board conducted with the community and staff back in November 2022. The district says that the results of the survey consisted of 72% of parents and 87% of staff that were in favor of switching to four-day weeks.
In addition to having a survey, AISD also worked with various focus groups, attended a panel featuring numerous districts that already moved to four-day weeks, researched the pros and cons and met with district leadership to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a decision.
"School leadership expects the four-day week to increase student achievement with more opportunities for intervention, and help with teacher retention and recruitment," said AISD on its website.
With the reduced school weeks, AISD says that school days will be extended by approximately 35 minutes to make up for the time that would be lost without a Friday. The district says that elementary school days will run daily from 7:30 a.m. to 3:40 p.m., middle schools will go from 8:20 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and high schools will operate from 8:10 a.m. to 4:42 p.m.
Little Elm ISD was another district in North Texas to consider the change. Local Profile previously reported that the district asked parents to vote on the four-day school work in Dec. 2022 due to understaffing and poor state report cards.
“We want to have certified teachers in the classroom with our students. Just since August 1st, we’ve had 23 professionals resign,” said Daniel Gallagher, superintendent of Little Elm ISD.
According to WFAA, the Anna Independent School District will be joining numerous other school districts throughout the state of Texas that have also made the decision to switch to four-day week schedules. These districts include Tioga ISD, Chico ISD, Rains ISD, Mineral Wells ISD and Alba-Golden ISD.
