This fall, about 100,000 Idaho kids will attend a four-day school.

Once a novelty — confined largely to remote rural schools operating on a tight budget — the four-day calendar has gone mainstream. Three more districts are moving to a four-day schedule this fall. One is Nampa, the state’s fourth-largest school district. With an enrollment exceeding 12,500, Nampa is by far the most urban Idaho district to make the four-day switch.

It’s a popular move. The idea of longer but fewer school days gets high grades from grownups with a dog in the fight: parents, teachers and administrators. This year, 76 of Idaho’s 115 school districts will use a four-day calendar, along with 19 charter schools.

It’s popular, but also an unknown. The research into four-day schools is spotty. Some data points to a slight but incremental dropoff in achievement, which worsens over time. A four-day calendar might help a school recruit and keep its teachers, but the research is inconclusive. There is one point of consensus; a four-day schedule doesn’t save much money.

But none of this has stopped districts and charters from making the move — and hurtling past a point of no return. “Once you go to four-day, it’s nearly impossible to unwind that and go back,” said state superintendent Debbie Critchfield.

An ever-expanding footprint

For Paul T. Hill and Gloria Heyward of the Seattle-based Center on Reinventing Public Education, the four-day phenomenon was as foreseeable as it was troubling.

“The idea has proved contagious because adults like it: Teachers have more free time, and stay-at-home parents like the convenience of taking kids to doctors and doing errands on Friday,” they wrote. “Many district leaders who have recently adopted the idea say that it gives them an advantage in competing for teachers, who understandably like the idea of the same pay for 20 percent fewer days at work.”

Their essay appeared in March 2017.

At that time, 44 Idaho districts and 11 charters operated on a four-day calendar.

Since then, the number of four-day districts and charters has increased by nearly 75%.

If the four-day schedule is a contagion, as Hill and Heyward suggest, it is a virulent one. But in many communities — and across much of rural Idaho — the four-day schedule is ingrained in routine and embraced by locals. In Butte County, for example, the four-day schedule has been in place for more than two decades, with no talk of turning back.

“There would be a rebellion if we were to return to a five-day week,” Butte County School District trustee Karen Pyron warned a House committee hearing in February.

Four-day districts and charters slice a wide swath across the state, touching 40 of the state’s 44 counties.

The enrollment numbers are even more telling.

The first fall reports aren’t due to the state until October. But the schools now operating on a four-day calendar — including Nampa, Emmett and Teton County, the state’s newest four-day districts — enrolled around 103,700 students a year ago. The student numbers could shift, but it’s reasonable to expect that Idaho’s four-day enrollment could eclipse the 100,000 mark, for the first time.

In 2016-17 — when Hill and Heyward wrote their guest opinion lambasting the national four-day schools trend — about 28,400 Idaho students attended a four-day school.

In Nampa, a transition, borne of adversity

A few years ago, Gregg Russell would have lined up as a four-day schools skeptic. “I always felt that it was important for kids to be in school.”

This fall, Russell is leading Nampa schools into the four-day transition — a move borne of financial adversity and bolstered by community support.

Nampa’s superintendent since 2022, Russell faced the makings of a budget crisis a year ago.

Federal COVID relief dollars were drying up. A change in Idaho’s school funding formula — returning to a more stringent pre-pandemic method based on attendance, not enrollment — led to reduced state funding. On top of that, Nampa’s student numbers continued on a 10-year decline. As a result, Nampa was forced into a series of big budget decisions: closing half-empty schools, redrawing school boundaries, reworking the class schedule to use its teachers more efficiently.

Russell knew a four-day week wouldn’t save much money — most of a school’s budget goes to salaries and benefits, and a district basically needs the same number of employees regardless of schedule. Still, he felt like Nampa needed to look at all cost-cutting options, even modest ones.

Meanwhile, Russell began hearing from patrons who encouraged Nampa to consider the four-day shift. In an initial community survey, 73% of respondents said Nampa should at least look at the idea.

As the debate continued, the adults coalesced behind the four-day week: in followup surveys, 73% of staffers and 59% of parents backed the move. Students were split, with half voicing support, and the other half opposed or undecided.

Nampa trustees agonized over their decision. In April, they approved the move on a 3-2 vote.

As the rollout begins, Russell is focusing on a number of variables — including class time and teacher vacancies.

Nampa looked closely at a study from Oregon State University economics professor Paul Thompson, who concluded that instructional hours have more of an effect on student success than the four- or five-day school week itself. Nampa added hours to its high school schedule this year. Ninth- through 11^th-graders will spend 1,065 hours in class, ranking fifth among Idaho’s 115 districts. Grade school students will spend 1,025 hours in class — a decrease of 15 hours, but still above Idaho’s minimum requirement of 900 hours.

While it’s early, Russell thinks the four-day calendar is helping Nampa recruit teachers. The district began this school year with only two unfilled teaching positions, compared to 13 vacancies last year and 16 the preceding year. Nampa is in fierce competition for teachers — vying with the five-day Boise and West Ada districts, which offer higher salaries, and the other four-day districts in rural Canyon County. Russell thinks Nampa might have found a niche, and he believes that is going to make a difference for students.

“There’s nothing the superintendent can do more than make sure a high-quality teacher’s in front of kids.”

‘We do things slowly:’ A three-year rollout in Emmett

Emmett Superintendent Craig Woods is no stranger to a four-day transition. He was superintendent in Canyon County’s rural Notus School District when it made the move in 2011.

In Notus, Woods came in on the back end, hired after trustees voted to adopt the four-day schedule. In Emmett, Woods oversaw a three-year transition. Trustees and school officials looked at the pros and cons of the move, assembling a citizens’ committee with residents on both sides of the debate. “We do things slowly,” Woods said last week.

Like Nampa, Emmett went out into the community with a survey. Every group with a personal stake in the decision favored a four-day week. Staff support came in at 64%. Parents and students also preferred the four-day schedule, by smaller margins. However, community members said they’d prefer staying with a five-day school week.

When the question came before trustees in March, they unanimously approved the move.

Woods, like Russell, is watching the hiring process, and he’s also encouraged by what he’s seeing. Emmett received more teacher applications this year than it has for the past four or five years.

But Woods said the bottom line is student academic growth — and results beginning with this fall’s tests. And while districts have been loathe to abandon the four-day calendar once it’s adopted, Woods said Emmett will keep an open mind.

“If the data shows that this is not good for kids, we will look at changing,” he said. “We will adjust if needed.”

A political and policy quandary

Emmett’s best-known school patron is no four-day fan, and he hasn’t been shy about sharing his feelings.

Gov. Brad Little, an Emmett resident, “has long preferred five-day school weeks, especially as students have become used to attending school less, in person or at all, due to the pandemic,” said Joan Varsek, a spokeswoman for the governor.

This winter, Little and prominent legislators sparked a bushfire over four-day schools. It had to do with language in a complicated school facilities law. In its original form, the bill appeared to suggest that schools would forfeit their share of facilities money if they chose to adopt a four-day calendar.

Sensing a threat and an affront to local control, rural school officials like Pyron traveled to the Capitol to extol the popularity of the four-day schedule. And in the disjointed debate over a confusing omnibus bill — which earmarked $1.5 billion for facilities, cut income tax rates, eliminated the August school elections date and made the State Board of Education’s executive director a political appointee, among other things  — the four-day issue became an unlikely focal point.

Little and lawmakers blinked. They passed a followup bill that would allow four-day schools to qualify for facilities funding, provided they meet state requirements for classroom hours or instructional days.

The upshot: Some four-day schools might need to add another week or more to their calendar next year, in order to reach the state’s 152-day instruction requirement. But the law doesn’t phase out existing four-day schools — or forbid new ones.

For state leaders, the four-day issue poses a political and policy problem.

The four-day schedule is so widely supported, and so woven into the fabric of dozens of communities, that it is as hard to unwind at the state level as it is at local level. In a state where political leaders routinely espouse local control, second-guessing school schedules is even more politically dicey.

But Little and Critchfield harbor serious reservations about the four-day calendar.

On Jan. 29 — before the omnibus facilities bill surfaced — Critchfield penned a letter to education stakeholders offering her advice about the four-day calendar.

She said districts should not view the change as a “money-saving move.” They shouldn’t make the change unless a community is willing to sign off on longer school days and a longer school year. And they shouldn’t make the change in order to appease staff. “Please decide based on what is best for your students, not what is desired by your adult workforce or what neighboring districts might do.”

Critchfield stopped short of taking a pro-or-con position, and said her letter was not designed to sway school leaders’ opinions.

But in an Idaho Education News interview last week, Critchfield said she has been opposed to the four-day calendar for years — dating back to her time as a Cassia County school trustee. The district later adopted the calendar, while Critchfield was a district employee, as a pandemic-era mitigation measure.

“The reasons for moving to four-day didn’t add up for me,” she said.

Today, Critchfield says she’s concerned when she hears administrators say they can turn around a struggling school simply by slicing a day out of the week. She says the formula is much simpler: experienced administrators, trustees who put money where it’s most needed, and teachers who have the tools they need for success. “It’s not a mystery. We know what the ingredients are.”

For Little and Critchfield, the four-day schedule may be popular, but it remains an unknown.

More coverage: An international research company came to Idaho to examine four-day schools. They came away with a study in contradictions.