Four-day school week saved $268,000

BONNERS FERRY – When the school district in Boundary County, on the Idaho-Canada border, moved to a four-day school week, parents raised their eyebrows.

But the 2005-06 school year, the first Friday-less school season, saved the cash-strapped county $268,000. There was also better attendance and fewer disciplinary problems, Superintendent Don Bartling said.

He told the school board that teachers now are better trained, receiving instruction on Fridays, and students come to school after the long weekend more invigorated than ever.

“I was against the four-day week when it was first implemented, but now I am in favor of it,” Bartling told the Bonner Daily Bee. “It has not hurt our students academically at all.”

In the shortened school year, Boundary County District 101 met each of the 41 federal benchmarks tested by the No Child Left Behind Act, for the first time ever, said Brenda Walter, the district’s curriculum director.

Attendance jumped 4.9 percent last year and all grades reported that students came to class more than 90 percent of the time.

Since Idaho allocates money to districts based partly on attendance figures, the district will receive an additional $160,000 during the 2006-07 school year.

Boundary County also saved $108,000 by not paying to gas up buses, heat classrooms and cover other operating costs on Fridays, Bartling said.

He said many students participated in extracurricular activities on Fridays instead of during the four-day school week, which cushioned the overall loss of classroom time.

Many sports games that required long trips away from the tiny, isolated county were scheduled on Fridays and did not cut into class time.

And the parents who once frowned on the idea are overwhelmingly in support now, Bartling said.

Students will have Fridays free again this year, but the school board will soon vote on continuing the practice in 2007 and 2008.

“It would be more difficult to go back now,” Bartling said.