When it comes to student achievement, research would ideally track individual students, said Perrone, assistant professor of educational leadership at Indiana University. Since the researchers couldn’t access that level of data, it’s unknown if some of the ndings could have been a result of higher-performing students leaving the district.

e research is more comprehensive and based on more data when it comes to the housing ndings. While housing prices in 27J haven’t dropped, home values stopped growing at the same rate relative to its most comparable neighboring district. erefore, homeowners lost out on growth that they likely would have seen without the change, according to the study.

e researchers calculated those losses compared to the cost of paying for the mill levy override and found that, nancially, conservative estimates suggest homeowners would have been better o approving the tax measure.

“ ese results suggest the decision to adopt a 4-day school week in a metropolitan setting should not be taken lightly,” the study states. Voters should be aware of possible tradeo s when voting against local tax measures that can drive a district to switch to a four-day school week, Perrone said.

Teacher retention was goal of shorter school week

In years past, 27J has made other drastic changes as a result of the failure to pass local tax measures to increase its revenue. For instance, when the district faced overcrowding and was unable to build new schools, it had to move the high schools to a split schedule from 2015 to 2018. Some students were on campus in the mornings and some attended school later in the day to reduce the amount of people in the

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school buildings at one time. is past November, in the eighth attempt to pass a mill levy override, 27J nally succeeded. e measure will allow the district to raise teacher salaries starting this fall. at, together with more funding from the governor’s proposed budget, could get starting pay to $50,000, Fiedler said, but that’s still lower than in many metro area districts.

Fiedler believes that the four-day school week, while an e ective incentive for some teachers, is not as e ective when the pay gap with other districts grows too wide. He said he hopes next year’s raises will make his district attractive again.

“It is a total tradeo ,” Fiedler said. “ at gap eventually becomes so large that it’s not worth the tradeo .”

Kathey Ruybal, president of the teachers union in the district, said teachers and sta overwhelmingly support the four-day school week. Some sta members opposed to the change left in the rst year, but sta who leave now leave because of low pay, she said According to state data, turnover rates for teachers in 27J have dropped to 14.6% — a lower rate than many neighboring districts. And when compared to the nearly 17% rate in 2017, it’s a drop of 14%. But other nearby districts had steeper drops in turnover rates in the same time period.

For the study, the researchers went deeper, using sta -level data from the state to look at years of experience, salary, and whether teachers had advanced degrees. Teachers with between 5 and 15 years of experience were 5% less likely to return to the district after the four-day switch.

“We can only see experience level, but we don’t have e ectiveness ratings,” Perrone said. “It’s possible they kept the best teachers.”

Perrone, who worked on the study with Adam D. Nowak of West Virginia University and Patrick S. Smith of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said he hopes other researchers will take another look in the future at how the four-day switch changes the workforce in the long term. How districts use the fth o day for professional development or e statement said Hudson and Monaco elementary schools have the lowest enrollment in the district. ey aren’t the only schools to see declining enrollment. e district’s statement said the moves “allow the district to continue providing students with a high-quality education while mitigating the adverse nancial and educational e ects of lower student enrollment.”

“ e consolidation of the two schools, Hanson and Monaco, will be the rst step in the district’s 10year strategic plan, which is academically robust, helps to achieve whether that gives teachers more planning time might change the culture of the workplace or encourage more e ectiveness, he said.

In 27J, teachers have training on one free Monday each month. A second Monday each month is used for principal training and district meetings. at means principals and school leaders rarely have to leave schools for meetings when students are in class, Fiedler said.

Ruybal said she doesn’t think the four-day school week has had much impact on culture or planning time. However, additional planning time during the four-day school week that her union won in negotiations is helpful, she said.

Findings match other research on fourday school weeks e nding, he says, seems related to how much time is actually lost. In districts that make up most of the instructional time, the decline is smaller or not there.

Traditionally, most four-day school districts have served rural communities. Recently, more large, urban districts have made the switch, including the 14,000-student Independence School District neighboring Kansas City, Missouri. But research that isn’t focused on rural districts is limited — making this study signi cant as researchers look to better understand the impacts.

Paul ompson, an associate professor of economics at Oregon State University who reviewed the study, said the academic ndings echo what research has found elsewhere: Academic achievement generally declines when schools switch to a four-day week.

In 27J, Superintendent Fiedler said, the district continued to meet the state’s instructional time requirements by lengthening the school day and eliminating early release or other time o for planning.

Research on four-day school weeks has started looking at impacts beyond test scores, ompson said.

“Most educational interventions are happening within the schools,” ompson said. “But there’s many equity for all students, and is nancially stable,” the statement said.

“We know that tonight’s decision will be heartbreaking and di cult to understand for some of our families,” said Reneé Lovato, Adams 14 board of education president, in the statement. “We just hope that our families trust that this long-term vision is in the best interests of our students, community, and district –providing an equitable high-quality education and additional programs and services to support all of our students’ needs.”

During its Feb. 14 meeting, the more outcomes that can be a ected by this choice.” is story is from Chalkbeat Colorado, a nonpro t news site covering educational change in public schools. Used by permission. For more, and to support Chalkbeat, visit co.chalkbeat.org. board also instructed Superintendent Karla Loria to make several other changes.

Previous research, for example, found an increase in juvenile delinquency in Colorado communities with four-day school weeks, perhaps because teenagers spent more time unsupervised. Looking at the impact on housing makes sense, ompson said.

Oded Gurantz, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said other research nds that educational policies can have a quick and observable impact on the local housing market.

In the case of 27J’s four-day school week, families may have to consider the cost of childcare on the fth day. Local realtors, including Alan Strange, said they haven’t noticed potential home buyers talking about the four-day week recently, but did notice it when the district rolled out a split schedule for the high school.

With more families working from home since the start of COVID, Strange said, the impact may have since dissipated.

Fiedler said that when the district rst moved to four-day weeks, about 1,000 families signed up for the district’s childcare option for about $30 per day. Now, only about 300 families use the childcare option. In 2020, after the start of COVID, some government agencies including the Adams County government o ces, moved to a matching four-day work schedule.

Fiedler agrees that moving to a four-day school week is not a decision to be made lightly.

It was the necessary and right thing to do for his district, he said to Chalkbeat. “We had to do something,” Fiedler said.

But when other school district leaders ask whether he would still make the switch if he had the money to just pay teachers more, his answer is no.

One is to come up with a prekindergarten to grade 6 or K-6 curriculum for all elementary schools by August 2024. Another is to have each elementary school adopt an academy theme by 2025.

A third is to begin the process to merging the two district’s middle schools – Adams City and Kearney middle schools – into one junior high school for seventh- and eighthgraders by the 2027-2028 school year.

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