A suburban Indianapolis school has become the first in the state of Indiana to announce plans to move to a four-day school week.
The Lafayette School Corporation announced last week that the Board of Trustees voted last week to approve a four-day week for Vinton Elementary beginning in the 2024-25 school year.
"We are pleased to offer learning options that meet all students' and families' needs," the corporation wrote in its anouncement.
According to NBC Chicago affiliate station WTHR, the change means the elementary school will run from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with six "professional development days" slated to take place on Fridays throughout the school year.
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In total, that means school will be in session for 151 days, with more than 64,000 minutes of instruction, WTHR reported, more than 10,000 minutes above Indiana's minimum requirement.
Parents are being urged to attend one of a series of informational meetings about the change.
The announcement has been met with both praise and criticism, with some on Facebook supporting the decision to offer parents "choices" and others questioning the potential impacts on children who rely on school days for basic needs like food.
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“People implement four-day weeks for various reasons, but for us here at Lafayette School Corporation, it was more about offering a choice,” district associate superintendent Dr. Alicia Clevenger told WTHR.
The debate over a four-day school week is nothing new.
In 2010, Illinois lawmakers pushed to give local school boards the option to shrink the school week to four days, but not everyone is happy about it.
In 2018, a Colorado school district implemented a four-day school week and canceled school on Mondays to save money.
27J Schools was the largest district to make the change, and at the end of the experiment's first year, kids and parents have relished having three-day weekends while parents worried about child care for younger students and unstructured free time for older ones.
