School District Eyes Four Day School Week in Bid to Cut Energy Costs

This is an interesting idea for a real issue. As a teacher myself, however, I question how this will affect educational quality. If the school week is shortened, then the school day will likely be lengthened, something that I think is unwise. There is only so much focus that a student can maintain through the school day. Adding an extra 80 minutes or so to the other 4 school days is not as effective as having that fifth day for the week. There must be other ways to reduce energy consumption. Here are a few ideas:

1. Vegetative roofs
Most schools have flat roofs that are just sitting there, doing nothing but absorbing heat when it's hot, and losing it when it's cold outside. Vegetative roofs can be reasonably low cost, and there are organizations who provide grants for such projects. It can even be done as a class project, thus adding an educational element to the process, while reducing heating and cooling loads significantly.

2. Landscaping
Simple things like planting decidious trees along the South, East, and West sides of the school building to reduce cooling loads in the warmer months while still allowing sunlight in the cooler months can go a long way. Planting evergreens along the North side of the building will help reducing heating loads in the winter.
Planting food crops would help reduce the cost of cafeteria food, reduce the amount of food that needs to be transported to the school, and would provide for fresh and local fruits, vegetables, and possibly even meat like poultry. I'm sensing another class project.

3. Reducing extracurricular activities
Certainly the most controversial, considering people's affinities for school sports, but reducing the amount of extracurricular bus trips would have a huge impact. Intramurals or community-based sports and other extracurricular clubs could be implemented in their place.

4. Online classroom
This may or may not work for elementary schools, but if high schools did go for a four day school week, the fifth day could be an online class. The vast majority of homes have internet access, and pretty much every local library does as well (Note: I teach in an inner-city school and most if not all my students have a computer and internet access at home).

having 25 kids together in one classroom is probably more efficient than having 25 kids in seperate houses heating/cooling, lighting, powering each of those seperately.

though it may be cheaper for the school itself, it doesnt really seem like the best idea overall.

Or, you could keep kids in school and lower transportation costs. Wow, what a great concept!

1. Replace diesel school buses with natural gas buses or buses running on biofuel.
2. Make carpooling for parents and teachers mandatory. At a former job, commuters had a reserved parking space for a portion of the week (3 or 4 days), and were required to use an alternative form of transportation on the other days of the week.
3. Have students work on green roof projects or community gardens which can offset transportation costs, and provide a learning opportunity to students.
4. In high schools, remove student parking to encourage students to walk or ride bikes to school.

I also agree with the above poster's suggestions for an online campus program.

The problem I forsee with giving students a three-day weekend is that this time will likely be spent using cars and buses to go to malls or the movies or what not. It won't decrease the pressure on the environment. Further, how will parents deal with children who cannot be left on their own while the parent is at work?

I think schools would save a lot of money if they just took out all the energy sucking vending machines! In my high school there were at least 10 scattered throughout the school. Now that I'm in college it's even worse. There's probably almost 30 vending machines at my campus since every individual building has at least 5. It's ridiculous.

Another thing to do is just stop abusing the thermostat. The school does not have to be 60 degrees in the summer and 80 degrees in the winter. I'm not saying completely turn off the a/c or heating but kids can handle being a little chilly or hot.

I agree with Tim H who said, "There is only so much focus that a student can maintain through the school day. Adding an extra 80 minutes or so to the other 4 school days is not as effective as having that fifth day for the week."

This is a really, really bad idea. Educational quality will really suffer if schools start having longer days. Why do the kids always have to pay the price because of dumb a** things that adults do? Jaysus! If the schools are so strapped for cash that they can't afford to run their buses and keep the lights on, here's a novel idea: Stop giving gazillion dollar tax breaks to huge corporations that pollute, and start adequately funding public education.

I think schools should try to get more sidewalks installed (if the students live close enough to bike or walk) so it will encourage students to bike or walk to school, rather than rely on the bus.
I know there was a city bus that let people off at my school but there were still 4 or 5 buses the school district had that would pick people up.

I think incorporating schools into the stops of public transportation (if there is public or mass transportation in your city...) and letting them pick up some of the kids instead of spending more taxpayer money to pick up kids that can easily ride the city bus.

If there isn't mass transportation available, I would try to get the parents to try to get their city to provide public transportation which will eventually lead to less demand for the school district's buses which will save the school district money.

Unplug the computers and tvs at the end of the day. There were so many times I wanted to unplug things that were not being used at my school. I'm pretty sure all the hundreds of computers and tvs we have are still plugged in right now just drawing energy.

Schools can try to raise money for renewable power. I know my high school could have easily ran on solar power if the school had the money to buy the panels.

I agree with the comment on vending machines. My high school had about 7 or 8 and most of them had the same thing in them. Either outfit the outside vending machines with solar, remove some of the machines or try to see if they can purchase a more energy efficient vending machine.

I would feel so gulty whenever we would run the air in the hot months but also have the window cracked because it was "too cold" to some people. In the winter time in one of my English classes we would have to keep the door open because it would be so hot. I think digital thermostats would help and the schools should set a limit on how hot or how cold they can get.

@Raijo
"having 25 kids together in one classroom is probably more efficient than having 25 kids in seperate houses heating/cooling, lighting, powering each of those separately."

You assume that these houses aren't already being cooled and/or heated. This is highly unlikely.

@Allison Palser

1) I disagree that biodiesel is the answer to anything, that's a long lingering debate on the forums :)
2) Mandatory carpooling would never, ever work. Not even in a town of 200 people. Aside from the massive coordination efforts, you also have to drive out to each home and pick people up. You're assuming everyone lives within a mile of each other and there's a nice neat row of people on the way, along with the fact everyone gets along.
(skip 3)
4) What about students who live in areas where there is no alternative access or it's too dangerous to commute by anything other than car?

I think the assumption that kids will spend their extra days riding around and playing is also false, considering you would need extra income as well. You'll probably see little to no increase over the extended weekend due to no extra income generated from another day off.

I'd agree with points 1, 2 and 4 of Tim H's first post though. I think kids need more extracurricular activities though, not less. Not necessarily sports and regular "drive to" events, but outside the box things like ecological studies of plant life (even on school grounds, no travel required!) gardening, things like that. All mostly available locally at schools.

From a student's perspective (I'm in college, but I still remember high school and middle school pretty well), it simply isn't possible to maintain focus long enough to compress a five day school week into four days. Students would just learn less of what is taught, since unlike working at a job, learning is never routine.

I agree that school roofs are totally wasted space that could be used for much, much better purposes. I question the wisdom of trying to grow food at schools, though, mostly because I wouldn't trust the other students to leave it alone. School-based PV or solar thermal power would be awesome, though.

At my high school, the buses were inevitably delayed, got to school late, and so on, so many parents drove their kids to school every day. In high school, by the time senior year rolled around most students drove or had their friends drive them. Also, there were essentially no bike racks available, but plenty of parking space, but that could be because the school was in a hilly area (which discouraged biking). Basically, improving the bus system would go a long way.

Our local high school recently installed a "state of the art" tri-generation system for energy efficiency / reliability purposes. An article appears here:
http://juli-research.blogspot.com/2008/05/branford-high-school-first-with-new.html

A few local municipalities are starting to strongly consider 4 day work weeks for town employees.

I have my doubts about the energy savings potential of 3 day weekends. I suspect there would be more miles driven, more trips taken, etc...

Personally, I'm the opposite, I learn more when presented with more information in a shorter period of time. In fact, the longer period of time attributed to a subject, the worse I do. I need to have it presented and then move on, or else I get extremely bored. That's just me though, and didn't factor into whether I thought it was a good idea or not (although I should now :P).

There is a proposal for this in rural northern Minnesota. The two main drivers there are transportation costs of getting kids to school and also heating the school.

There are schools 40 miles apart sharing staff as each school cannot afford full-time staff in many areas. The parents are concerned as this leaves them with a day of work where their children are at home alone - with no good options to solve the problem.

It's really a difficult issue all the way around. I wouldn't be surprised if most of rural US was dealing with this issue.

@Allison Palser and Cybercat

Generating biodiesel from crops is clearly not the answer, but recycling vegetable oil is a viable alternative. The high school where I teach uses the used cafeteria vegetable oil to run a veggie car that was converted as part of a class project. Here's a link from brave new films on the project at my school:
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/4133-greasecar

In schools without the automotive shop classes that my school has, teaming up with a local college and/or restaurants, the oil can also be converted to biodiesel that could be used to heat the school or used in diesel vehicles. Connecticut College is in the process of converting its used cafeteria oil to biodiesel to use in the colleges diesel on and off-road vehicles, as well as to potentially heat some buildings. I'm sure that there are similar projects elsewhere.

If working parents are worried about having to spend more on daycare costs (because school serves as daycare in a way) then maybe only kindergarten through 5th grade should be 5 days a week ad 6th grade and up should be 4 days a week. Once a kid is in 6th grade (12 years old) they are hopefully old enough to be home by themselves in most American cities for a couple hours until their parents are off work.

On the 5th day, have the students pick lettuce and work at meat processing plants to help prepare them for their future careers after their education is diminished by another fifth.

I think this is one of the worst ideas I have heard to help fight the battle aginst global warming. We are ranked 30th in the world with our lower level eduation and now Virginia is trying to make it worse. EDUCATION IS THE KEY to solving this problem. The school should implement a class that teached student to live more sustainably. Making this class a science course will boost student interest in biodiversity. This is a huge step in the opposite direction to solving the energy crisis. The solar roof idea is EXCELLENT. Every school, house and business across the US should have solar panels on them. This is a great answer to solving this issue. The school should also change what they are offering their student at lunch. Providing student with fresh, organic food is healthy, and uses less packaging. I really hope this school doesnt make this rediculous decision to go witha four day school week.

A fundamental change in our driving habits is now required.

The Automobile Industry is going to be in the same position as the Airline Industry in the next few months. Unless we get away from gas combustion vehicles, including Hybrids, the automobile industry (as we know it) will die.We need to make drastic moves. America needs to move to ELECTRIC. The vehicles are not as fast, not always as fun to drive, but the move will save Americans money (Billions) and help bring change to our automotive companies. Let's "Be Green"!!!!!!!!!!!! BG Automotive Group Ltd. has a car that will travel 80-100 miles per charge for $15,995. Finally a car that most Americans can afford. Did you know that 80% of all drivers, drive less than 50 miles per day? This new car will cost an equivalent of $0.20-0.25 cents/gallon (depending on electricity rates in your area). Why send $700 Billion per year to OPEC (now buying up U.S. companies) when we can use this money for our schools, health care, social security for all Americans, etc, etc, etc. We can make the difference if WE change.

Whether or not you reduced the amount of days the school was operating, there are a million ways to reduce the carbon footprint. Some more ideas/comments:

I am a teacher in a school in Japan. There are basically 2000 disposable bento boxes plus drinks thrown away every day- think straws, napkins, chopsticks, animal bones... the school saves money but the municipality pays for the waste disposal. How is this better than providing a free/cheap school lunch?

I would like to see the day when students are obliged to sew their own uniform rather than pay $600 dollars to buy one.

A laptop on every desk. Not necessary.

Freezing cold A/C. Not necessary.

Clean, white paper rather than recycled because it's nominally cheaper. Baaaad!

No paper recycling. There's a place down the street! It could get started with minimal effort.

People drive from walkable distances. Parking should NOT be provided for people who live 2 bus stops away!

Etc.

I think better than the 4 day week is the no-day week. I dropped out of school and that was the best option for me! (I went to college, and I may be a ruffian, but I am a thinker, and eco-concerned, so I don't think it was a mistake at all)

One of these days soon it may just be cheaper and better for your kid's education, to have 'em schooled at home...whether that means online or sending the paperwork and books to the parents' houses...

I know, it's not the 'usual' kind of education but I'm sure real schools would probably start their own programs like this, if that's any comfort.

And I dislike parents to have to be forced (as the economy is making many parents face more and more difficult choices) to choose to do things instead of deciding,
"You know what? I think homeschooling's the thing for my child."....of their own accord.

The only way I see the schools being able to pack more education into a shorter period is to change their teaching methods -- like others have mentioned, they've alot of space on the roof, maybe they could get creative and use it for greenhouses up there...or space for full-sized experiments for science class...
Hands on practical applications of the stuff they're learning, instead of only just on paper...then sending the kids home with books at the end of the fourth day with assignments to do -- only to have them come back and discuss what they'd learned at the beginning of the next first day of the week.

Get the kids more INVOLVED in the learning process instead of hoping they absorb something via their many bouts with the ideas of the week on written paper.
Talking with them more about it, encouraging them to talk with eachother about it.

Especially if you involve the lessons in comparison to today's issues and stuff their parents are dealing with.

No way.

Sure it saves the school energy and money, but it totally distributes and then some. To put 1000 kids in a school is way more efficient than 1000 homes individually with AC or heat during the day, or 20 childcare centers running their systems. Kids need more engaging things to do, not more time to waste watching TV. I don't even want to imagine what a poor family would go through to have the kids home 3 days in a week, trying to afford daycare and getting the kids there. If we are concerned with the big picture, just don't allow driving to school unless a documented exception is made. I think by law public schools must offer bus pickups to any resident of the town attending the school. Buying a fleet of buses, and coordinating the system to run smoothly and on time might be difficult, but having so many kids either being dropped off by a parent or driving their own cars in high school is much much much worse environmentally.

If this does happen, I'd tell local grocers and pharmacies to stock up on condoms. I remember high school, and I remember fondly those days when the kids weren't in school and the parents still had to go to work.

Not that you're ever going to prevent teenagers from having sex, but giving them an extra day a week, and a day that their parents can't be around, just makes it easier.

Not to mention that the parents of the younger kids are going to have to find child care for that extra day. The schools might save money, but someone else is going to have to pick up the tab.

I have experienced this situation and feel that it can work for middle/high school students without significantly impacting the educational outcomes. Of course, some adjustments in methodologies, teaching styles, and scheduling have to happen. The cost-benefit analysis will be positive when considering the fact that transportation and energy costs will only continue to rise and because school funds are generally finite, money for these items will come from educational funds anyway, so I believe a 4-day week would be an effective and green approach to energy savings. The attention issue is a non-starter because classes can be rescheduled and times adjusted to avoid the focus issues. Why do we fear change so much; after all, our students spend less time in classes than most progressive nations' students. Maybe we will stop being number 20 and get up to the top of the educational heap.

When government has a monopoly on our school system, we cannot find the best way to solve these problems. The prodominent task for government to get bigger and take over more control. These interests are going to be the biggest concern as opposed to educating our kids and saving tax payers money

We need to get unions and the government out of our schools thus allowing parents choices where to send their kids for the best education at the most affordable price. If private schools want to build them to be green, and you want to send your kids there because they build a green school you would be able to. If I want to send my kids that teach about freedom and our system of free enterprise and economics I could do that too. With the government contoling things nobody is happy and the crap is taxed out of us everytime we turn around.

i think shortenng days is ok if each day is legnthened.. i agreed before the school does this though there's a few other ways to improve budget b4 resorting to this. student attention span is a problem..

but honoestly.

i've gone thru education system both in taiwan and in america(elementary to middle school in taiwan and middle school to high school in america) i think kids can be trained to focus longer.. i find teens here just get bored too fast..cuz they never have longer period classes..prob. until college maybe or special classes ie. chem and science or lab. i think kids, esp teens can endure longer classes if they get used to it.

also someone mentions childcare problem.parents sometimes need childcare btw the time the kids get off school until the parents come home from work each day or on the days kids have no extra-curricula activities . for younger kids it's always a logistic problem to pick up kids in the afternoon if the parents have to work.

so actually some of my friends who have kids just choose to be stay home mom cuz they have drive kids to/from school and activities so much. it's a full-time soccer mom job.

it might be logistically simpler if they have longer days. let's say get off from school after 5pm , when parents are off work. and just need one day of childcare maybe (ie. friday) rather than needing pickups and a couple of hours of childcare each day. which might be more complicated to arrange.

i remembered in taiwan i would get off school at 5pm ish. and by the time i get home mom's home from work w/in an hour or half. it works out very well.

also the extra hours at school kids are not wondering around. and it's helpful financially for parents with tight budget and can't afford extra curricula for kids. i know b/c my family wasn't well off and we couldn't afford extrra -curricula activities..lol.

there's that one free day. but again i think it's a whole day it's easier to arrange just childcare for that one whole day or extra -curricular for that one whole day for older kids. and b/c there's not so much trucking the kids back and forth each days it saves alot of gas and transportation efforts.

but yeah again there mgiht be other ways for school to save $$ before this as mentioned by others.

I had a son in school, (graduated thankfully) the few times i had to pick him up myself or drop him off, the line would wind for BLOCKS!!! youd spend 40 min trying to pick your child up, and waste gas/pollute ect. Maybe neighborhoods could carpool with a back up if someone was sick, of course some neighborhoods have so many kids theyd need several but reducing the number of cars in that line would have been wonderful. I would have done it. but only had two kids for blocks and blocks. YET on the bus, who drove thru three different communities back tracking and winding around, when my son got on the bus there would be three to a seat and some without seats! NOT ideal either. Unfortunately, his dad was invalid and couldnt get out of bed, and i worked every chance i had to support us, we do live just over the two miles from school, BUT THE WORST PART for walking biking children is all the PEDOFILES LIVE exactly on that 500ft perimeter and my child ahd to go right thru there. NO THANK YOU! I probably could have walked him to /from school , but i would have to take off from work and that couldnt happen, or we'd be homeless.

Although I would have greatly appreciated a 4 day school week when I was in school, I just can't see that being in the best interst for our children's education. Focus needs to be taken off trying to minimize the amount of time that they are in school, and placed back on what caused us to bring this up in the first place. The school's heating/electrical bill? Install Solar Panels or Wind Turbines! A moderate investment now will benefit the schools greatly for years to come.
The School Buses CO2 Emissions? Convert your buses to Bio Diesel, start a carpooling rewards program. Maybe a special super-quick drop off/pick up lane where you don't have to wait in the usual long line to drop your precious cargo off if you are carpooling?

We need the school districts to face the fact that they are going to have to "Invest" money to save money and our environment, not jeapordize our children's future!

For better or for worse this is not a novel idea, here in new mexico when all the mines closed having to bus kids eighty miles from the middle of nowhere to pretty much the same wasn't practical anymore so the whole school district along with the post office and all the other government offices went to a four day work week. its worked great for nine ten years already here. the school saves money and the kids are hardly a nuissance, you see them fishing on the river and driving the tractors on the family farms. i think having the kids at home more brings their respective families together. its a win win.

As you think about compressing a 5 day week into a 4 day week, remember how much of those days are spent transitioning from class to class, eating lunch and in elective (or for fellow elementary school teachers- 'special')classes that aren't fundamental. So, the actual class time that would need to be added to the end of each day would be less than you would think for the 7.5 hour day that you would be missing.