Rural schools try longer days, four-day weeks

The sun is just beginning to glint over hills where coyotes prowl and deer nibble at wheat stubble when 13-year-old Jordan Damron boards his school bus. It's 5:30 a.m. He won't return home for almost 12 hours.

This seventh grader's 10-mile commute is an ordinary part of life in this tiny farming community in north-central Idaho - but this year his long school day got even longer.

The town of Orofino has instituted a four-day school week as a way to trim costs in an era of bare-bones budgets. Classes run longer each day, but on most Fridays the school is dark, school buses are idle, and kids stay home.

Few other options were at hand. There's no money to fix the pre-World War I school, an aged red-brick structure among the state's most dilapidated. There's no money for plenty of other things, too, so the community made the hard decision last summer to shorten the school week.

The experiment is raising questions about how a shorter week affects learning, and whether the monetary savings are worth the academic cost. And, as in other places that are trying four-day weeks, the move is also forcing lifestyle changes for schoolchildren, parents, and teachers alike.

"As an educator I would never have taken this route, but we just simply don't have the money to keep going," says Superintendent Al Arnzen, a 30-year veteran who says the financial climate in the state's schools is the worst he's ever seen.

Mostly rural school systems in at least 12 states are experimenting with the shorter week, finding that by lengthening the school day by more than an hour and knocking off Friday or Monday saves money on things like transportation and heating. But views are mixed and research is scanty on whether the cost savings are sufficient and if students are suffering academically.

Ted Sizer, the former dean of the Harvard School of Education, goes as far to say the four-day week is a disgrace to the educational ideals of the "richest country in the history of world." [Editor's note: In the original version, Sizer's name was misspelled.]

"My instinct is that it's a trend in the wrong direction," says Mr. Sizer. "Kids need a lot of attention in schools and to reduce the days they have per week in an already shortened academic year, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense."

But rural school districts from state to state aren't left with too many options as local economies struggle and fixed expenses such as energy costs and health insurance continue to climb.

Located in the heart of the Clearwater National Forest, Orofino (pop. 8,544) is about as rural as it gets. Lewis and Clark passed through here in 1805 on their trek to the Pacific Ocean. Portions of bus routes still follow their historic trail.

In 2000, about 200 jobs were lost when area lumber mills shuttered and the taxable value of property plunged. Faced with a $650,000 deficit, the Orofino district is in its first year of trying a school schedule that has been implemented around the country for more than two decades.

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