KIMBALL -- The Kimball School Board voted unanimously to transition to a 4-day week schedule for the upcoming school year.

The schools are currently on a 4 ½ day schedule with Wednesdays being a half-day. The school board and the teachers first discussed the idea of transitioning to a 4-day week schedule in November of 2023, after which they sent out a survey through the schools’ websites and social media for public input. 

The board discussed the results of the survey in a December board meeting and made the final approval in the March meeting.

Superintendent Trevor Anderson said the public opinion was mostly positive; however, parents were concerned about childcare for their elementary kids and food services for all the kids. 

The school district will implement two programs to alleviate the concerns. One being students from Pre-K – 12 will have access to food services Friday mornings at Mary Lynch Elementary. In addition, the elementary afterschool program ELITE that currently operates on Wednesday afternoons will now be offered on Fridays from 8 a.m. – noon.

School Board President Travis Cook says the reason the discussion happened so quickly is because the teachers’ contracts were up for renewal this year, which would need to include the change in the schedule.

“If we were going to move to four days, this was the year to do it,” Cook said.

The Christmas, Thanksgiving and spring breaks will remain similar. Graduation in May for high school seniors will be pushed back by one week.  

The school days for students will be lengthened from about 7 hours per day to 8 hours per day so that they still meet the required instructional hours.

The teachers and staff will also work an hour longer per day, but they will get most of the Fridays off. The professional development they currently attend on Wednesday afternoons will be reduced to about one Friday a month. It will either be a full day or half day event, depending on what month it is and where it falls on the calendar.

Cook says the half day on Wednesdays is just not feasible anymore. 

A quite a bit of students in the district are farm kids, so they are spending just as much time on the bus as they are in school on Wednesdays.

The staff members who are also farmers will benefit from the Friday off.

“We’re an agricultural-based community where a lot of the people who work at the school also work on a farm, so it would provide an extra day of farming,” Cook says.

As for the teachers, Cook says they feel like there isn’t enough time on Wednesdays to have a useful lesson.

Social Studies Teacher Matthew Shoup says he is ecstatic for the short week, and not for the day off, but a little extra teaching time the rest of the days will go a long way in his lessons. 

“It’s easier to do more with less,” Shoup says. “Even just five more minutes makes a big difference in being able to better explain a topic.” 

Cook also adds that this is not a new idea. Four surrounding school districts are on a 4-day week schedule, and the members of their school boards said their communities combated the childcare obstacle by some of the high school students offering to babysit on the days off.

Anderson says it's hard to tell what will work well and what won’t until after a year of the schedule, but he added that one perk of students having Fridays off is oftentimes those who are on teams that travel for events and games typically do so on Fridays, so this way, they are not missing class time. 

“I'm sure there will be some ups and downs throughout the year but with effective communication we can see it through,” Anderson says.