Fridays used to be a time when K-12 students and teachers eagerly counted down the minutes until the weekend, hallways buzzing until the final bell rang. But since 2022, that familiar Friday ritual has vanished at many schools – replaced by a four-day school week.
Colorado leads the nation in the number of school districts operating on a four-day week, with 60% of its districts adopting the four-day schedule. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts in La Plata and Montezuma counties made a significant shift to a four-day week, largely driven by challenges in retaining teachers and staff members.
A recent report by the Keystone Policy Center suggests that Colorado school districts with a four-day week generally experience lower learning retention compared to those with a traditional five-day schedule.
Yet, several school district superintendents in Southwest Colorado said the four-day week remains a positive choice for small rural districts, especially for keeping teachers.
In 2022, Bayfield and Ignacio school districts transitioned to a four-day week, while Durango School District 9-R, the largest in La Plata County, has remained firmly opposed to the idea.
Montezuma-Cortez and Dolores school districts also moved toward the four-day week, with Dolores leading the charge in 2021.
“Ensuring a high-quality staff is a focal point of the district,” said Bayfield Superintendent Leon Handhardt. “We have seen improved staff retention rates and are seeing an increase in applicants for open positions.”
Since 2022, Ignacio School District has hired 25 new employees (teachers and support staff) on a yearly basis. Meanwhile, Bayfield School District has hired 46 teachers during the same period, retaining 72% of them.
The shift to a four-day school week meant longer school days, with the benefit of having Fridays off.
School districts face greater challenges when it comes to recruiting employees than just the number of days they must work. Ignacio Superintendent Chris deKay said the four-day school week helps with teacher and staff retention but it doesn’t entirely solve the teacher shortage problem.
While teacher retention has been better, cost-of-living issues still loom large for school districts when it comes to teacher recruitment.
“It’s not uncommon for us to have one or two applicants where we used to get 10 to 15,” deKay said.
La Plata County ranks second highest in Southwest Colorado in terms of cost of living for a family of four, with earners needing to make $86,196 in order to affordably live, according to Region 9 Economic Development District reports.
Following salary increases in 2024, first-year teachers in Ignacio School District now earn $47,700 annually, while Bayfield School District offers a starting salary of about $48,000, according to recent job listings.
Durango School District 9-R has recently increased teacher salaries, with starting pay now at $51,500 – all still below the state average.
deKay said school districts can only offer so much in terms of salary, and if a four-day school week helps more teachers stay with the district, it’s a positive step.
Marianna Poling, a physical education teacher at Bayfield Intermediate School, said the shift to a four-day week has been a game changer for lesson planning and teacher well-being.
This is Poling’s first year with the Bayfield School District, after two years at Miller Middle School in the Durango School District. Before that, she spent six years as a health teacher in the Greeley School District. During her time in Greeley and Durango, she worked under a traditional five-day week schedule.
“I feel like I have more time to plan intentionally,” she said. “The Fridays that we have free, I’m able to really take that time, and reflect on how I’m approaching lessons and looking at it on a deeper level.”
During traditional five-day weeks, Poling often felt she was constantly squeezing in lesson planning and professional development between classes and mandatory teacher meetings while working as a health teacher.
To ensure she was fully prepared to teach, she often had to work extra hours on weekends to grade papers, cutting into valuable time with her family.
The four-day week has created a more relaxed environment, she said.
“Because teachers can focus a little bit more on the students rather than what they need to do to plan out lessons, I think kids are really benefiting from teachers not being as stressed,” Poling said.
But where the four-day week has taken the most criticism has been with learning retention.
Durango School District opposes the four-day school week, citing recent studies that show it has been less effective in supporting student learning retention.
Superintendent Karen Cheser has also criticized the abbreviated schedule because it provides fewer days for students to complete project-based learning and internship opportunities.
“Four-day school weeks in other districts have impacted field trips, project-based learning, extracurricular activities and athletics – which are all important to students and families in our district. In the Durango area, it can also be a hardship for working families to find and afford child care for a full day during the week,” she said.
However, Ignacio School District has shown signs of improvement on standardized test scores.
The district jumped from the “Improvement & Priority Improvement” categories in 2023 to the “Performance Categories” in 2024 for progress made in academic growth, plus postsecondary and workforce readiness testing, according to a news release from the district.
School performance was based on results via Colorado Measures of Academic Success testing, the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test and the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
The district as a whole moved into the accredited status after jumping from a cumulative score of 46.9% during the 2022-23 school year to 59.3% during the 2023-24 school year.
deKay said there are multiple factors that go into the district’s improvement on standardized testing, and the four-day week is one of them. He said longer class periods allows students to engage more with their teachers.
Additionally, teachers now have full-day professional development meetings on Fridays once a month, allowing them to focus on curriculum development. Under the previous five-day schedule, Ignacio held early release days on Wednesdays, providing only an hour and a half for these sessions.
On the other hand, Bayfield School District showed a slight decline in standardized test scores last year.
Bayfield Middle School and Bayfield High School saw their cumulative scores drop 3.7% and 5.3%, respectively, going from 2022-23 to 2023-24, according to a news release on the district’s website.
However, Bayfield Intermediate School saw a 4.3% increase at 66.9% in 2023-24.
“We have seen an increase in scores in previous years since we transitioned to a four-day week,” Handhardt said. “We have identified a slight dip this past year and are focusing on our continuous improvement efforts to address strategies to show growth and academic achievement. We do not believe that the slight dip is due to the four-day week.”
Handhardt said when the district reviews test scores across the different schools over the three years of the four-day week, it has observed both increases and decreases in various areas.
“None of these changes have been significant or consistent enough to draw firm conclusions about the impact of the four-day week on academic performance,” Handhardt said.
Child care on Fridays has been another concern with the schedule.
However, both Ignacio and Bayfield school districts have found ways to assist parents.
“When we transitioned to the four-day week, we expanded our partnership with La Plata County Boys and Girls Club to provide Friday programming,” Handhardt said. “We have an extremely positive relationship with BGCLPC and are able to provide no-cost Friday programming to the families in our community.”
Ignacio School District offers options like Friday enrichment activities and has worked to schedule more sporting events on Fridays to provide additional opportunities for students. Sometimes Fridays are also used for tutoring.
Enrichment activities provide training in positive social, cultural, recreational and interpersonal skills and provide experiences to broaden and expand a student's life understanding. For example, environmental projects would be considered an enrichment activity.
When Ignacio School District began offering the enrichment activities on Fridays in 2022, it hosted about 50 students. In 2024, only about 10 show up to the activities. Most of those students are of elementary school age.
deKay said parents have adjusted their work schedules to accommodate child care on Fridays. Some of this has been the result of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, the largest employer in La Plata County, allowing employees to move toward four-day work weeks.
Also like Bayfield, the Ignacio Boys & Girls Club offers Friday programming for students.
In Ignacio School District, the longer school days allow for two meals to be provided to students, which isn’t always guaranteed when they’re not in school, deKay said.
Students can now eat both breakfast and lunch at school for free.
According to deKay, 65% of students in Ignacio School District are on free and reduced lunch. The district has about 650 students and has the highest enrollment of students on free and reduced lunch in the county.
This number could be higher because of inconsistencies in reporting as a result of the implementation of the Colorado Healthy School Meals for All program in 2023.
Families stopped filling out the paperwork for free and reduced lunch when they found out their children could eat school meals for free, deKay said.
“The research on students having a full breakfast and lunch and learning retention is pretty well-documented,” deKay said.
tbrown@durangoherald.com
