WOODBURY — It’s April and you just finished yet another long and painful week. Spring break is over, and it seems like there’s nothing to look forward to. The countless hours of homework and school feel never ending, and the weekend ends before it even started.

It’s such a blissful feeling when a three-day weekend is approaching and the following week feels short in comparison. So why isn’t it implemented every week? The answer is not as simple as you might think.  

​”It would be nice in some respects, but not so good in other ways,” says Andrew Zielinski, the ag mechanics teacher at Nonnewaug. “While a three-day weekend every week would be great, it would certainly cut into our summers a little more. I am busy through the summer between SAE visits, vacation, and working on the farm.”  

Zielinski is one of the many that would be troubled by the shorter weeks. There’s a lot that would have to be changed with the schools and student and staff schedules to make the extra day off work.

“For schools, the problems could be a lot like the same problems of block scheduling: larger chunks of learning per day in school increasing the stress on students and teachers, especially students who benefit from more evenly distributed learning activities,” says William Pease, a physics teacher.

Even though he says a three-day weekend would be attractive, and he could start planning vacations or activities, Pease sees more cons than pros. 

Freshman Kyleigh Paige acknowledges the downsides of a potential shift in scheduling, yet she sees added benefits for students. 

“I think a four-day school week would be a good idea for students because of a better school/life balance,” Paige said. “We [would] get more days to recharge and allow ourselves to focus on the week ahead.”

Paige’s beliefs are echoed by schools that have already implemented a shorter week and have seen positive results. One such district was mentioned in an article by Katherine Bradley in SeattlePi.

“The Melstone School District in Melstone, Mont., has reported statistics indicating that their attendance improved as much as 20 percent over a two-year period after moving to a four-day school week,” Bradley wrote.

By having a longer weekend, students would have more time to recover, do homework, and prepare for the week rather than taking a sick day off during a five-day week. 

Students and teachers agree that having an extra day away from school would be great because teachers and students are working non-stop for those five days. Teachers stay after school to grade and help out students with schoolwork, while other students are in clubs and sports. Having an extra day off would allow students and teachers to catch up and prepare for the upcoming week.

According to Bradley’s article, Oakridge School District superintendent Don Kordosky reported that test scores improved after his system in Oregon implemented the four-day school week.

There’s plenty of evidence pointing towards having a four-day school week, and students would take advantage in a heartbeat.