Since an entire day is cut off the week, that extra time needs to be made up during the remaining four days. At my school, the class went from 8:15 a.m. until 4:15 p.m. — about an hour or two longer than a typical five-day-week school’s day. An eight-hour day is undesirable for elementary-aged kids. It can rapidly tucker them out. For high school kids, longer school days mean longer school nights. If a student is involved in sports, the school gets out at 4:15 p.m., then practice goes until 6:30 p.m. After two or more hours of homework, every hour of the day is completely eaten up. Working after school is also an exhausting option for high schoolers with the long school days of the four-day week.
Pros
As I mentioned before, the four-day model has been used mostly in rural schools — that is, schools that don’t receive a lot of funding. My school switched to four days to cut spending. One day less of class means one day less of heating the school, fueling buses, feeding students and paying certain staff members. For a school desperate for funding, cutting out a day of the week is a reasonable option.
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In the four-day model, core classes (AKA the ones that require actual thinking) are set in the morning while students’ brains are still fresh. Electives (the ones that don’t demand as much focus) are usually after lunch. As someone who has lived through them, I can testify that the longer days are completely manageable for first-graders and seniors