2 More North Texas School Districts Switch to Monday-Thursday Schedule

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Two more cities in North Texas support the popular idea of ​​a four-day school week.

School districts in Terrell and Anna will move to a Monday-Thursday schedule next year.

As more and more North Texas districts announce plans to move to a four-day school week this week, we decided to contact one of the first school districts in the area to adopt it two years ago and see how it works for them.

Lacey Cotten, with three young children and a full-time job, was unaware when Quinlan ISD switched to a four-day school week two years ago.

“Yes, I was definitely scared at first,” Cotten said. But she’s become a fan since Quinlan ISD’s four-day school week includes the option for working parents to send their children to Afterschool Centers on Education, or ACE.

It is federally funded and offers daytime activities free of charge to parents.

“I can drop them off early in the morning and before eight, and then they can stay there until five on the same day,” she said.

Quinlan’s superintendent says other rural areas that are also moving to a Monday-Thursday schedule, such as Anna and Terrell, will need to have some option for parents who can’t afford day care.

Quinlan doesn’t even have a kindergarten.

“For some of these counties, the biggest challenge they will face will be what will they do on Fridays when they don’t have school?” Quinlan ISD superintendent Jeff Irvine said.

Irwin says rural areas like his are using the four-day school week as an incentive to hire teachers, and it’s working.

“Was it a good decision? Absolutely, of course, we saw that we had an increase in the number of employees, and we saw how the level of applicants increased,” he said.

He says the data shows that student achievement has not fallen but even improved in one of the high schools.

Parents of older students say that their children still study more at home.

“Now everything is online, so if he needs to do extra work, he can always pull out the computer,” said parent Chris Salazar.

More than 40 counties across Texas have chosen a four-day school week that is slightly longer, starting at 8 a.m. and ending after 4 p.m.

But Quinlan’s parents and teachers seem to be giving up on their district’s experiment with the idea for now.