Early reviews positive for GF’s 4-day week

It’s only week three, but the change to a four-day schedule has already led to positive signs, according to Green Forest School District Superintendent Matt Summers.

Summers and building principals gave an update on how the school year was going at the district’s monthly board meeting Tuesday, Aug. 22.

“We think it’s going really well,” Summers said of the Tuesday-through-Friday schedule. “It’s kind of the old argument, you can get into the chicken and the egg all day long, but are four very intensive, strong days better than five maybe lackadaisical days? Right now, we believe that the four days with a high energy pace by our teachers and kids wanting to be in school, ready to come back after having three days off, is going to translate to better scores, better attendance and decreased discipline.”

Summers said while some in the community have voiced opposition to the new schedule, the district hasn’t received much negative feedback the first two weeks.

“We really expected to have more comments about the four-day week, those that were adamantly opposed to it. We’re not seeing that,” he said. “I’m hoping that’s a good thing. We’re tracking three things. We’re tracking academic performance, we’re tracking attendance and we’re tracking discipline cases. We feel like all of those will improve.

“We should see an improvement academically, absences should go down and we feel like discipline cases should go down.” The district had an enrollment number of 1,366 as of Friday, Aug. 25, the superintendent said. That number has included more car riders than the district has seen in the past, which is another result of the new longer-day schedule, he said.

“What we’re noticing early is that we have more car riders than in the past at all campuses,” Summers said. “We’ve been in school now basically two weeks, but our belief, our thought, is that our hours now that we’re longer and going fewer days align with most people’s work schedule better than the traditional, say, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. day. So,we’re seeing a lot more car riders, which is not a bad thing at all.

“We did have to make a couple of tweaks to get through and out and those things have occurred and we’re moving in a much faster pace now.”

Some changes have had to be made to adjust bus schedules, Summers said.

“Obviously, bus routes are a hotbed issue every year because we are a long, slender district,” he said. “If you’re going north to the Missouri line or you’re going south beyond Highway 412, those routes are always going to be longer. We’ve had to tweak a couple of those for time and move some kids around and we’ll have another couple of tweaks next year.

“We did have to tweak our arrival times that our buses are loading. … we’re loading our buses now at about eight to nine minutes per campus. So, our buses are now arriving at the elementary/intermediate school at 4:10 p.m., and that allows them to be at the high school for their dismissal at 4:20 p.m. It’s lining up nicely.”

Summers said having Mondays off is allowing older students time to have employment and has already shown signs of keeping both students and teachers refreshed each week.

“What we’ve seen with our older students, both middle school and high school, those kids are working either in employment in businesses or in an industry around the community or on their family farms,” he said. “What we’re seeing with our younger ones is that they’ve kind of been home just long enough to miss it a little bit, and they’re kind of excited to come back on Tuesday “Same thing with our teachers. They’re coming back a little more prepared and excited to be here on Tuesdays. So we hope that translates into … doing a better job at what we do.”

BOARD ACTIONS

Among approvals from the board at the Aug. 22 meeting were spending $11,500 on a new HVAC unit for the middle school library, $28,263 of elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds to renew the district’s IXL learning subscription and $37,098 for the Lexia English program.

“That’s a K through 12 program and it’s used to help in reading for kids that have curriculum issues,” Summers said. “It also has a real benefit for our English language learners.”

The board also announced dates for next year’s school board election, which will be for the zone 2 seat held by Dianna Raye Sturtz.

The candidate filing period will be from noon Nov. 6 to noon Nov. 14, Summers said. The election will be March 5, 2024.

The board also approved eight student transfers into the district and 12 student transfers out of the district.

Board members also accepted the resignation of paraprofessional Regan Shields, approved the transfer of Cassandra Simmons to a migrant paraprofessional position and OK’d the hires of bus driver Jed Blocker and migrant paraprofessional Allison Launius.

The board also recognized October as Internet Safety Month.

“We’re going to be doing several activities with our students to make them aware of the dangers of the World Wide Web,” Summers said.