I think we should have a 32-hour workweek, so that everybody works 4 days a week, but spread out over a 5-day workweek. Basically, everybody needs a day off during the workweek to take care of their shit. And if parents can alternate, they are looking at only 3 days a week with no parent coverage. Because so much of the world basically works for people with flexible offices or stay-at home parents.
Of course, in my current fantasy, we sever the tie between employment and health insurance so that's not a barrier to hiring more people.
So, school would be 5 days a weeks, but teachers would only work 4. A lot of teachers, for example, have trouble calling doctors' offices, because they watch the kids during lunch and can't take days off for appointments.
Is their plan to increase hours on the fourth day so kids have the same amount of class time? Or is it a net reduction?
A four-day work week seems like a good idea in general but doing it in schools does add some complications. Not sure what to think about it.
Right, I support scheduling so that teachers can work 4 days a week but kids are in structured activity 5 days a week. Also "school", not necessarily classes should go to 5pm. Fantasy, because it would require more staff.
They have to maintain the same number of contact hours per year, so they'd either increase the length of the day or increase the length of the school year. Or some combination of both. My guess is it's cheaper to make the day longer and so they'd do that.
All you need to do for that is slow down the rotation of the Earth.
I've been lobbying for more hours of sleep per night, so I'm on board.
My ideal is for a dual-shift workweek, including white collar work. People work, say, 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, either 7-13 or 13-21. That way everyone has some of the day not taken up by work, and can do their doctor visits, etc. on their off shift - plus spend time with their kids. Not sure how the school week should interface with this, though; as is parents would probably disproportionately take the first shift.
This is really interesting because they just tried to introduce this in (part of) Scotland and almost everyone including the unions hated the idea. Four and a half day week rather than four, mind.
BBC report here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rlj4g3e52o
Key themes in favour:
• Opportunity to increase subject choice and greater equity in Secondary school
curriculum.
• Potential to recruit more teachers to our region.
• Agreement that it would lead to improved wellbeing for young people and some staff.
• An increase in extracurricular activities and wider achievement opportunities would be
welcomed.
Key themes opposing the proposal:
• Across all stakeholder groups, particularly parents, the majority of themes opposing the
proposal related to adopting the proposal for primary schools.
• Childcare: families would be required to find childcare, which is often not available and
unaffordable where it is available.
• Insufficient provision of clubs and activities to occupy children on the afternoon of the
shorter day.
• The length of the longer days in Primary were considered too long for many children
leading to poor wellbeing.
• Following the longer days, concerns that lengthy journeys in more rural areas would
lead to safety concerns in winter months.
• Disproportionately adverse impact on poorer families and vulnerable children and
young people.
-
Can't say for schools but my town recently went to a 4 day work week for employees. As in not just the employees work a 4 day week but town offices are only open 4 days a week, but they're open to 6 on 3 night and until 7 on a 4th. It's actually quite a stupid approach since employed people who commute to work won't be able to leave wqork at 5:00 and make it to towen offices in time to get their business done before those offices close at 6:00. Plus of course almost all town office have more than one person, so they could let half have Friday off and the other half Monday off and still have the office be open 5 days a week.
I will say one thing about schools: making the school day longer in order to go from 5 days a week to 4 days a week is A REALLY TERRIBLE IDEA. We'll have to unearth Chuck berry and have him rewrite the lyric: "Soon as 4:30 o'clock rolls around, you're ready to lay your burden down ..."
"It's actually quite a stupid approach since employed people who commute to work won't be able to leave wqork at 5:00 and make it to towen offices in time to get their business done before those offices close at 6:00"
Out of curiosity... what are you *doing* on these trips? I've lived quite a few decades and I've never in my life had to set foot in person in a local government office, except in the line of my actual job, which obviously I do during work hours. Anything I need to do with the council as a private citizen, I've done by phone or by email or by post.
I'm confused about what the benefits of 4.5 days is supposed to be, you still have to go there 5 days a week! "Potential to recruit more teachers to our region" doesn't really clarify much to me, what makes 4.5 days more desirable for teachers?
On reading the report...you get to finish early for the weekend.
That said, having spent nearly 3 days in Dumfries and Galloway, in my expert opinion...
10:I support a longer day at school. Since being a latch-key kid is no longer acceptable, I think parents, who work for a living, shouldn't have to pay separately for after-school programs. Just have the schools do it. Again, this is in my utopia where there is adequate funding.
That said, I think the psd kinds of things stress people out a lot, and if the government could help it would go a long way to making life feel more affordable - even with inflation.
How about we just fuck over families without a stay-at-home mom because we enjoy causing pain?
People say there aren't latchkey kids, but it's really just that it starts slightly older than it used to.
I estimate it becomes widespread around 4th grade, and universal by 6th.
18: yes - I think around 11 or 12 you're allowed to leave your kids lone at home unsupervised for 3 hours or something.
"It feels super appealing" in what way????
"It feels super appealing" in what way????
ah, the doublepost curse has come at last to me
"It feels super appealing" in what way????
It has the passing appeal of Three Day Weekends Forever!! I know parents with more flexible schedules who like the idea of being able to do more cool stuff with their kids. I saw a FB post by a school board member, and most of the responses were enthusiastic parents who were being kind of giddy/silly about it: "Do you even have to ask?????" etc.
Jammies is somewhat intrigued, because presumably teachers would use Fridays to get caught up on their grading and planning. In reality, every time they have a teacher work day, it ends up being monopolized by truly stupid meetings, so I'm less optimistic than he is.
Me personally, it does not change my life much at all, except the house would be trashed by kids lazing around on Fridays, and also on Fridays we'd have to ask other parents to give our kids rides to all the activities and rehearsals that would inevitably be scheduled.
When I was growing up, we had Short Wednesdays. I thought it was great. In middle school, instead of having seven 50 minute classes, you had seven 20 minute classes. It was so dumb.
I believe it was to save money. They did away with it when I was in high school, because as mentioned above, it was so dumb.
I think making the school day longer would be bad for kids.
There are two sorts of administrators, ones who you talk to when you need to do something and who can get the thing done, and ones who run meetings. The fundamental problem is too few of the former and too many of the latter.
27 is true.
Ex recto, OP will come to be seen as the point where Heebieville either got its shit together or doom-loooped into white flight and ghettoization.
The school district where I grew up went to a 4-day week over a decade ago. Bussing is a major cost for a rural Missouri consolidated school serving an entire county, so they said cutting bus service one day a week is a significant cost savings. It struck me as a failed-state, can't-even-keep-the-schools-open sort of thing, but my parents thought it was practical. I ranted a little about the school district saving money on the backs of working parents who would have to find childcare, but I guess there are a lot fewer 9-5ers there and a lot more people doing shift work or service jobs, so they were already at that point anyway.
30: In MA, there are so many lower-income, but not poor, working people with preschool age kids who can maybe afford a day or two of child care and only make it work with grandma taking a shift or two and the parents staggering their work with one parent working on the weekend.
Our school district has "at home learning days" where they send the kids home with a laptop and double count it as an instructional day. They also have half days once a week. It is such a mess. It makes it hard for women to work full time,and the kids learn less.
It's hard not to think how much my kids are screwed. We're in a horrible school district and if we're lucky we can lottery into maybe having a less horrible education. (Can't afford college for them now anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter.)