Ash Grove School Board rejects four-day school week plan

Research committee shares findings, board follows with majority ‘no’ votes
 
The Ash Grove School Board rejected a plan that would have put the district on a four-day school week starting with the 2022-23 academic year. Four members of the school board voted against the proposal, while three voted for it.
Prior to the vote, Dr. Austin Houp, CIT director for the district, delivered a PowerPoint presentation where he shared the finding of the Four Day School Week Research Committee, which explored the merits of a four-day school week for Ash Grove Schools.

Academic research
Houp said the committee did a lot of academic research on the impact of a four-day school week, which included analyzing 17 peer-reviewed research articles on the topic, including 12 of which were released in the last three years; of those, eight were released within the past year. The research, he added, covered 36 districts in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Idaho, which are states that have a significant number of districts that use a four-day school week. It also included surveys of 6,000 high school students and 1,200 elementary school parents. The surveys were conducted in six four-day-school week districts and six five-day school week districts in each state.
Houp said that, in terms of student performance, attendance and district finances, there was no real difference between what was reported in the four- and five-day districts.
“There was,” he said, “first of all, no evidence of improvement or detriment on student achievement from four-day school week when instructional hours are consistent between the four-day school week and five-day school week … there was also no evidence of improvement or detriment on attendance and no evidence of significant financial savings.”

Sixteen Missouri school districts provide feedback
The committee did not solely rely on academic articles, though, Houp said. They also reached out and interviewed the superintendents at 16 Missouri schools districts which currently employ the four-day school week. One of the findings during their interviews, Houp said, was an increase in their students’ academic performance.
“They felt that there was improvement in student achievement,” he said. “That's really hard to gauge with COVID and stuff like that, but that was common theme throughout them.”
Houp said the superintendents also told them that they saw improvement in instruction and curriculum due to staff having more professional development days, as well as improvement in student and staff attendance and staff and student morale. Additionally, he said, the superintendents told them that student discipline issues decreased, and the four-day school week was overwhelmingly supported by the parents and guardians in the districts.
“Every school that I talked to literally said, ‘We will never go back, because our parent (and) guardians love it.”

Committee also surveyed students, staff, parents
The committee also conducted surveys of high school and middle school-students, staff and parents/guardians in the Ash Grove School District to get feedback on how favorably a four-day school week would be viewed within the district.
For the student survey, Houp said, the committee received 149 responses. When asked about their ability to have food at home on the extra-day off, Houp said 88.6-percent said they would have plenty to eat, while 3.5-percent said they would need extra food sent home through the backpack program. The remaining students chose not to answer.
The students were also asked about how safe they feel at home, work and school. Houp said 144 students said they feel safe at home, 121 said they feel safe at school and 70 said they feel safe at work. On the flip side, 11 said they did not feel safe at school, while one student said they did not feel safe at school or work.

Staff responses
Staff members were also surveyed, Houp said, and 78 staff members responded.
In the staff survey, Houp said, the staff members were asked if the decision to go to a four-day school week would impact their decision to remain with the district. According to results, 21.8-percent said “Yes,” 35.9-percent answered “No,” 30.8-percent said “Maybe” and the remaining staff members chose not to answer.
Students, staff and parents/guardians were all asked about whether they would prefer a four-day school week or a five-day school week. Among parents/guardians (312 responded to the survey), 68.9-percent were in favor of transitioning to the four-day school week, 10.9-percent were neutral and 20.2-percent said they opposed transitioning to a four-day school week. Staff also overwhelmingly said they favored a transition to a four-day school week; 85.9-percent said they were for it, 10.3-percent said they were neutral and 3.8-percent said they were opposed to it.
Among the students, 81.9-percent said they were in favor of a four-day school week, while 18.1-percent said they preferred the five-day school week.

What a four-day school week would look like
During his presentation, Houp outlined what a four-day school week would look like in the district. He said the district would cease to have class on Mondays, except for the Mondays before Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the Monday of the last week of school. Classes would meet on those days.
Houp also said the school day would begin at 7:50 a.m. and end at 3:30 p.m. Students would be in school for a total of 150 days, and there would be 1,077 instructional hours during the school year. Certified staff would meet for an additional 15 professional development days and would be contracted for 30 minutes each day beyond the 7:50 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. schedule.
For parents whose children needed it, Houp said, Pirate Pals would provide daycare for students from kindergarten through sixth grade. Students needing extra food would be able to get it through the school’s backpack program, and Pirate Pals would provide breakfast and lunch to students on Mondays when they were out of school. Tutoring would also be available, and extracurricular events would still be scheduled on Mondays.
Houp concluded by saying that the Ash Grove Administrative Team was prepared to implement a four-day school week for the 2022-23 school year, if the board approved.

Board splits on vote
After Houp’s presentation, the board voted on whether to implement the four-day week. Prior to voting, Board Treasurer Jeana Scroggins said that no one on the board made a “snapshot judgement” on whether to implement the four-day school week, and promised that, no matter what decision was made, “we will remain united as a board.”
Jeremy Willmon, board vice-president and chairman of the research committee, also spoke before the vote and said that “it was hard to dispute a lot of the data” presented. He also said that he had spoken with the superintendent at the Reeds Springs School District, and said that the superintendent had told him that Reeds Springs had lost a lot of teachers to neighboring districts, but they were “now coming back because of that four-day school week.”
Then the board voted. Willmon, Scroggins and Caleb Smith voted in favor of the four-day week, but Matthew Hancock, Michael Gray, Jerry Morton and Bill Duncan all voted “No,” and the proposal failed.

Many present express disappointment in the vote
After the vote, many of those in attendance walked out of the meeting, several saying the vote was “Very disappointing.”
“As a parent,” one woman in attendance said, “I would like to say that our teachers … who actually educate our children, just walked out.”
Another man expressed his frustration at the board before leaving, calling the vote “Disrespectful.”
“Everybody worked hard on making sure you had the information, and now you’re going to have all these other school districts … where they can be recruiting and bringing in teachers.”
The board continued with the rest of their agenda before going into closed session.

Parents react
Outside of the building, Leticia Nessley, whose children are “a coming in freshman and a junior” in the high school, said she was afraid that the district would lose several good teachers over the vote.
“We're going to lose quality education for our children, because we have a group of really good teachers, and unfortunately, we didn't listen to them in a way to keep to … keep them happy.”
She said the extra day off would have given her some extra quality time with her children.
“Having a junior who is academically driven,” she said, “it's … difficult to see him on evenings because he's doing a lot of homework, so that extra day would have been nice,” she said.
Another parent, Amanda Reece, said that she felt that the board should have gone with the committee’s recommendation.
“I think it's really unfortunate that our board members don't seem to care about what the teachers, parents (and) students have to say,” she said. “I think there was a lot of data and research and time that went into this, per their request, per their hand-picked committee members, and they still didn't take that into consideration at all.”
Lindsay Buckley, whose child will be a seventh grader next year, said she was uncertain how she felt about the school board’s vote.
“I was surprised,” she said. “I understand there are reasons on both sides, I think just given the presentation, and the positive reaction from the community and staff in favor of it, it was kind of a surprising decision.”

From the president of the board:
It was a difficult decision but one that could not be undone once the change is made.  I understand the desire of the teachers to have time to meet their many responsibilities such as grading and planning so they can spend more time with their families.  The last several years of Covid have been difficult for everyone. I appreciate the work of the committee and read everything that they compiled.  I also read additional articles and obtained teacher retention data and student achievement data from DESE on the four-day districts and five-day districts in our area.  For the most part, those four-day districts did not perform as well as Ash Grove in retaining teachers or moving students to advanced and proficient in state testing.  I know that if the vote had gone the other way, I would have done everything that I could to be supportive.  I hope that after the emotions subside we can all be on the same page again and be supportive of one another.
Bill Duncan - Ash Grove Board of Education president

Video of meeting
A video of the board meeting, as well as the PowerPoint presentation delivered by Dr. Houp, can be viewed on the district’s Facebook page.