After Iron County vote, other 4-day school districts share lessons and warnings

CEDAR CITY — Iron County School District is now the largest school district in the state to approve a four-day school week for all students, after a 4-3 school board vote Tuesday.

The change comes after more than a year of research and community input. District leaders said 66% of parents and 71% of school staff approve of the change, which can take effect as early as the 2027-2028 school year.

"I think it was a relief to everyone to actually have a direction to work towards," said Shauna Lund, Iron County School District communications director. "We know there's going to be a lot of work to put things into place."

Lund said the discussions initially began as a cost-saving change for the district, but conversations with other four-day school leaders showed financial savings are not significant in the long-term.

"But in the meantime, we had done surveys with parents and teachers and students as well. And overwhelmingly the majority said this is something they wanted to explore," said Lund.

She said students are busy with athletics and extracurriculars at younger ages, and families were "feeling the burnout," so they asked for more family time. She said teachers are also interested in using one weekday off to collaborate and prepare for the other school days.

The district plans to add 15-20 minutes of classroom instruction Monday through Thursday, shorten holiday breaks, and move teacher development days to Fridays. That keeps the instructional hours in line with state standards and allows every Friday "off" for students.

One of the main criticisms of the plan is the need for childcare on Fridays for working parents.

"As of Tuesday night, we're very early in this process, so we have a lot of things to explore, and we know that there are community resources out there," said Lund, adding that some families have taken to social media to co-op Friday childcare or work together to help families in need.

The school district will not offer any student extracurricular programming on Fridays.

Other school districts with four-day weeks, like Box Elder County and Tooele County, only use four-day weeks at rural schools with majority parent and staff approval.

"It depends on the lifestyle; all of these schools are rural ranching communities," said Melissa Morris, principal of Grouse Creek, Park Valley, and Snowville Elementary Schools in Box Elder County. "We had attendance issues. Kids were coming and going with their parents to work, and they were missing school. And so that's why we looked at it."

Morris said a "pro" to the short week is increased student attendance and improved academic test results. Some "cons" to the week are long days for young students, food insecurity without Friday school meals and Friday childcare for some families.

"We do food packs where we send food home with families, so they've got them on the weekends," said Morris. "Our district student services director helps out with any sort of resources that are available in our county for parents needing childcare too."

Tooele County Schools notes improved teacher retention, teacher recruitment, student academic standards and community support within its four-day week schools.

"88% of our families and 95% of our employees support that four-day schedule. In fact, I think it would be really hard at this point to take that away from those who have become used to it," said Brett Valdez, communications director for Tooele County School District.

Valdez said implementing a four-day week district-wide has been brought up to the Tooele School Board before but isn't immediately up for discussion.

Tooele schools do join several others around the state watching how Iron County implements this program district-wide in the next year, and decide if it's something those districts should also consider.

"I think (other districts) need to look at the population that they serve," said Morris. "I don't think this would work in every school because of the population of the workforce. I think it works in our situation because it's family ranches and we have a lot of stay-at-home parents."

"Watch and see if we can make this work," said Lund. "We're going to work hard in this district. We are going to put together committees. We're going to make sure that the academic standards that make Iron School District strong are going to continue."

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