Catholic High in Niagara Falls will go to four-day school week
Niagara Falls Catholic High School will be the first school in the state to find out what students think about a four-day school week. School officials aren’t very worried.
When students were told about the plan last month during an interdenominational Thanksgiving service, the reaction was predictable.
“I thought the kids were going to walk across the ceiling of the gym,” Principal Robert Robert DiFrancesco said Friday. “They were flying.”
Niagara Catholic students will have three-day weekends throughout next school year, with Mondays off, after the school’s board of trustees unanimously decided to give the idea a try in 2009-10.
They hope the move will boost falling enrollment, create more educational and part-time job opportunities for students, and save a few thousand dollars on utility bills.
The school day will grow by more than two hours on Tuesdays and slightly more than an hour on other days of the week. Spread out over the school year — which still will run from early September to late June — students will spend a total of 15 more hours in the classroom, DiFrancesco said.
Two other Catholic high school principals, whom he declined to name, already have talked with DiFrancesco about the four-day plan, and the State Senate Committee on Education held a hearing about the idea on Dec. 9.
In written remarks at the hearing, state Education Commissioner Richard P. Mills said flexible scheduling can cut costs and raise staff and student morale, but also poses risks, including academic achievement falling further behind other countries, where the school year can stretch as long as 240 days.
A small number of public schools in 17 states operate on four-day weeks; three more states allow them. Hadley-Luzerne High School in the northeastern Adirondacks is toying with the idea of holding classes nine of every 10 weekdays, said state School Boards Association spokeswoman Barbara Bradley.
The four-day school week is not yet allowed in New York State’s public schools, Bradley said.
“There would have to be some legislative changes,” she said.
The state ties school aid and other requirements to 180 calendar days of classroom instruction. That could potentially be changed to an hourly standard, Bradley said.
The idea for a four-day school week first surfaced during the energy crisis of the 1970s, as a way to cut operating costs for schools, but never took a firm foothold.
Walter Garrow, chairman of the Niagara Catholic board of trustees, predicted the school’s decision for next year will have an impact on other parochial schools.
“The schools that don’t do it become less attractive,” he predicted.
Niagara Catholic has 160 students, about 50 fewer than it did five years ago. The school studied the four-day week option for months.
To help the idea fly, the school has promised its 20 teachers and 11 other workers the same pay and benefits, and has vowed to strengthen its already strong college-level course ties with Niagara University.
The goal also is to have no impact on extracurricular or sports activities.
“If we have to take a step back because it’s negatively affecting our students, we’ll take a step back,” DiFrancesco said.
Right now, at least, almost everyone affected seems to like the idea.
DiFrancesco has fielded several dozen calls as the word has spread. Parents and teachers almost unanimously like the idea of having a weekday available for medical appointments, jobs, college preparatory work, or community service required for graduation, he said.
“We have had absolutely no negatives,” he said, “except for one parent who wanted to know who’s going to watch her child on Mondays.”
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