Stanton District ponders four day school week

The Stanton Community School District is weighing the pros and cons of a schedule change.
At a recent special meeting, the administrators and staff hosted a meeting for parents and affected citizens to discuss the possibility of the Stanton District moving to a four-day school week, and how it would look if the district proceeded.
Stanton superintendent David Gute opened the meeting, addressing the possible misconception that the change was being proposed to save the district money. Gute said that simply wasn’t the case.
“I believe there might be a little bit of savings as far as utilities and minor things like that, but overall that is not why we’re considering this. It is about recruitment and retention of staff. We really struggle, across all of the areas, to find people to work in our schools,” advised Gute. “It’s a little bit of a double-edged sword as you look at it from an educational standpoint, because on one side you’re going one less day of the week and the thought would be, ‘The kids not getting as much education.’ But if we don’t have good teachers in front of our kids, then where are we at educationally? There’s a trade-off there one way or the other.”
Gute also said the discussion on the schedule change was not proposed by the administrators, but the teachers themselves.
“A small group of teachers came to me in late January, and asked if they could do a little research on this. I told them to go ahead, and they did do it. Details were presented to the Stanton School Board in February, and before the district moved any further, we new we needed to get some public input,” commented Gute.
The presentation was then turned over to K-12 counselor Ashley McDonald, fourth grade instructor Leanne Johnson, and secondary resource instructor Lacey Stephens, who proposed the initial idea to the board. All three said while they are part of the Stanton District, they are parents as well.  McDonald discussed the district’s retention problems with the crowd.
“As a small school district, we know that competitive wage is sometimes harder to offer. We then examined what other school districts doing to get staff indoors. A four day school week was one thing that we saw that worked for other small, lower-income school districts,” said McDonald.
• At Stanton, 32% of the teaching staff resigned in the 2024-25 school year, up from a 30% resignation rate in the 2023-24 school year, and 28% in the 2022-23 school year.
• Over the past 11 years, the district has had five different kindergarten, English, and third grade instructors, six different science instructors, and seven different physical education instructors.
Johnson said that across the board, there were going to be concerns about moving to a four-day school week. .
“The concerns are all the same. Childcare on the fifth day, food access, sports and activities, and what happens to the support staff and their wages. All of these are valid concerns. With the childcare and food access, we have plans in place that, if this is a need or an issue, we have things that we can do. There are also things we can do to help families with child care on the fifth day,  and with sports and activities. We have summer weightlifting here. A lot of you might have picked it already. It’s very well attended. And, those students are usually able to get here on their own. If a need would arise where students need help getting to sports or activities that would be on that fifth day, we would put something in place to help them. We’re here to help them,” said Johnson.
McDonald said if a four-day school week is implemented, typically the districts have Monday or Friday off. The length of the day is typically extended by 30 to 40 minutes. The time would be spread out throughout the day by adding five to six minutes per class period, and adding intervention time. Classes would begin at 8 a.m. and end at aaround 3.40 p.m. That would translate to the same amount of hours in a four day week that they would in a five-day week.
According to Johnson, many school districts have implemented a four day week, including the Cardinal, Central Decatur, East Union, Highland, Moravia, Murray, North Iowa, Saydel, Seymour, Sidney, WACO, and Winfield-Mt. Union school districts. Stanton reached out to a number of the districts on the list for feedback, and the districts they called responded that they were having issues getting applicants for open positions, the same problem Stanton is having. However, in those districts, application number improved.
“We were told that now they have two or three times more applicants than they had when they were on a traditional five-day week. At Stanton, we have job postings and sometimes we might get an application, but sometimes we might not. Sometimes we might get two applications, and of those, it still might not be somebody that’s a qualified teacher. We’ve had to be pretty creative the last couple of years filling positions. We’ve had to use some long-term subs or substitute teachers or just people that are willing to fill in. They’ve done a great job, but they are not highly qualified teachers. Research shows that the biggest predictor of a child’s academic success in school is having a highly qualified teacher in front of them. And that’s what we want for our kids,” stated Johnson.
Those in the audience were asked to submit questions, and a survey was sent out to residents for feedback. No further action was taken.