Corrigan-Camden School Board Approves Four Day School Week
It looks like a big change is coming to Corrigan-Camden ISD beginning in the new school year as a transition from the traditional 5-day school week to a 4-day week is in the works. The official statement was released on the Corrigan-Camden website:
Corrigan-Camden School Board of Trustees approved a four-day instructional week for the 2020-2021 school year. Students will attend school from Monday to Thursday. According to Superintendent Richard Cooper, we began to “explore the possibility of adopting a four-day instructional week in order to recruit and retain quality teachers and staff. We also will be able to designate more time to staff development and preparedness for educating our students. These two goals would have a lasting and significant positive impact on the children we are committed to serving”.
At the Board Meeting Monday Night, Mr. Cooper told the board that we had recently received three high-quality applications for positions due to the news of the four-day instructional week.
Mr. Cooper, “C-CISD began exploring this change by surveying our stakeholders. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of the four-day instructional week from both teachers, students and their parents across all grade levels. The next step included a community meeting where questions from the community were answered. The District Improvement Team met and a consensus reached that this was a good option for the district”.
The four-day instructional week will be a three-year pilot program. This change was not made to save money and is expected to be revenue-neutral.
C-CISD realizes that this would cut the number of meals that students receive at school. In order to overcome this concern, students will receive a sack meal to take home at the end of the school day. It would contain a sandwich/burger/wrap, chips, fruit and a drink.
Students at the elementary level would have additional recess time built into the school day. The school day length will be adjusted. Elementary school hours would be from 7:25 until 3:45. Junior High and High School hours would be from 7:40 until 4:00.
A four-day week will benefit teachers who live out of town by decreasing their drive time and driving expenses by 25%.
Some parents and students had concerns about extracurricular activities on Fridays. The superintendent reassured them that “we will play games and participate in other competitions that are on Fridays just as we always have. One upside is that Junior High students that travel to away games on Thursdays will not have to get up early on Friday after getting home late on Thursday night. Coaches and our district will work to make sure that students have transportation to the school for Friday games”.