GREENWOOD, Texas — Students at Greenwood ISD are set to see some major changes to their schedules. The Greenwood ISD board voted to change to a four-day school week for the 2024-2025 school year.
The school board has been discussing this for about two years now and believe they have enough variables to make the move.
The hope is that this will increase overall attendance, student performance in the classroom and bring much needed relief to the Greenwood ISD staff.
“It'd be a great benefit for our employees and our kids, obviously, but we're short teachers. We're short staffed and we're short substitutes so, so we hope that benefit might help us attract more employees to give our kids the best teachers we can," said Ariel Elliot, Greenwood ISD Superintendent.
Even during the current school year, class would have to be released early or cut entirely due to staff shortages. The staff shortages were seen clearly for sports coaches, who also doubled as bus drivers.
“There are times, especially when we have athletic events that are long way away, that we have to get out at lunch because of the bus driver situation," Elliot said. "So, it would just allow us to not have to do that on that end.”
Not every week would be a four-day school week, however. Some parts of the month will be staying at the usual five days per week with adjusted classroom times.
“It wouldn't look a lot different. We will add a few minutes to the day to make up for those days on Fridays that we miss," Elliot said. "So, we added some days, and we added a little bit of time to the days and so it won't look a lot different really.”
Of course, there are pros and cons to every change, especially with one as drastic as this one.
With one less day of work, some teachers may feel the pressure to get more work done with less time.
“The con is just can you get everything done that you need to get done in four days. That's really the main one," Elliot said. "The pros for it are can we attract more staff number one can we get more substitutes to work, which would help us in that area as well. It also helps us possibly with attendance. If kids are off on a Friday, maybe they'll come to school more."
According to Elliot, the district will roll with the punches and adapt where they have too.
“The way people do education has been this way for many years, so change is kind of hard and everybody wants to do it just like they did it when they were in school," Elliot said. "So, we really just want to look at best practices and things that would improve our district each year. So, this is one of those changes and if it causes heartburn and it doesn't work, we'll figure that out too.”
When it comes time to vote on the calendar for the 2025-2026 school year, they will take a look at how the four-day week worked out and make changes from there.