More flexibility, fewer Fridays: Why some Sask. communities are rethinking the school week

Some rural Saskatchewan schools are rethinking what a typical school week looks like.

School divisions, including Chinook and Sun West, are exploring or adopting a four-day school week. Shawn Davidson, president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association, said the model isn’t about reducing classroom learning, but rather creating a schedule that better reflects the realities of rural life.

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“It’s actually not a four-day week every week. It’s actually 14 Fridays that the kids don’t go to school,” Davidson explained.

“The amount of instructional time that’s embedded in the calendar is exactly the same.”

He said the alternative calendar redistributes instructional time, meaning school days would be slightly longer.

Davidson said the idea isn’t new, with many rural schools in Prairie South School Division using this model for more than 15 years and others starting to follow suit.

“Going to a four-day week really does have some positive benefits for students, because they have very long bus ride times already,” Davidson noted.

He said the extra 20 minutes in the classroom per day is insignificant compared to the time many kids spend travelling to and from school.

Benefits to the switch go beyond transportation, however. According to Davidson, Prairie South has also seen improvement within the classrooms.

“We’ve certainly noted there’s a reduction in absenteeism. So attendance is better, and we also know that when we get kids attending school, we can get them to achieve,” he said.

Davidson said the calendar also gives families greater flexibility to book appointments or attend extracurricular activities without students missing class time.

Divisions that have adopted the four-day week have also reported a benefit that addresses a challenge many rural schools face.

“Having that alternative calendar has actually assisted us with recruitment to some of our rural schools. It’s been something that has been attractive,” Davidson said.

The association president said offering a more flexible schedule has become an advantage for Prairie South, helping make positions in smaller communities more appealing.

But despite the positives outlined by Davidson, the proposal hasn’t come without questions or concerns.

Davidson said one of the biggest concerns raised by parents has been around child care on Fridays, when students are not in school. He acknowledged it’s an issue that comes up whenever communities consider making the switch.

“That’s always been one of the concerns, but once communities are on this alternate calendar for a year, in my experience, they’ve all been quite happy with it,” he said.

He said the issue of child care is something other communities have been able to work out.

From a financial perspective, Davidson said the biggest savings come from transportation. Fewer days on the road mean lower fuel, maintenance and operating costs for school buses, particularly in sprawling rural divisions where students travel long distances each day.

Whether the alternative calendar becomes more common across Saskatchewan will ultimately depend on local communities.

“The biggest thing is community adoption or community acceptance of the calendar. So for Chinook, this is a community-led initiative, as it has been in other school divisions,” Davidson explained.

“Typically what happens is they give it a couple of years and then review it.”

He said community members are usually the ones to bring the idea forward to the board and ask for the alternative schedule.

“If the community decides ‘That really wasn’t for us. We’d rather go back to a more traditional calendar,’ then that’s fine,” Davidson said.

“When we’ve done our two-year reviews, the communities have been (saying) ‘We love this. Don’t ever take this away.’”

Chinook School Division is proposing to move to the alternative calendar, while Sun West School Division confirmed that half a dozen of its schools will be moving forward with the idea for the upcoming school year.

“We’ve seen it be a positive for student achievement (and) for student attendance and it’s generally been very positive,” Davidson said.