Ash Grove R-4 talks 4-day week

By: 
Steve Chapman

Ash Grove educator Lindsey Jackson gives a long list of reasons the board should scrap the old schedule and move forward with a four-day week. (Photos by Ryan Squibb)

Ash Grove Superintendent Aaron Gerla begins his presentation, seemingly in favor of the change, citing hiring woes thanks to a shallow applicant pool.

During a March 8 public meeting, Ash Grove Board of Education members Jerry Morton, Mike Gray, Jeremy Willmon, Caleb Smith, Matthew Hancock and Jeana Scroggins listen as presentations are given in favor of a change to a fourday school week.

Ash Grove Board of Education hosts public meeting to pitch schedule change
 
The Ash Grove R-4 School Board held an open discussion about the possibility of moving the district to a four-day school week during a special meeting on Tuesday, March 8.
 
“Recruiting and retaining” qualified teachers essential:

During the meeting, Dr. Aaron Gerla, superintendent of schools, gave an extensive presentation in which he spoke as to why the district was discussing going to a four-day week.
“Two months ago, this was a completely different discussion,” he said. “Two months ago, I would not be standing up here in front of you right now, because again at that time, I didn't think Ash Grove needed a four-day school week to be able to survive and be able to succeed compared to the other districts around us.”

Teacher shortage a problem:

Gerla said the district needed to be able to “recruit and retain” qualified teachers, and three factors are making that task more important than ever before. The first was a shortage of qualified teachers throughout Southwest Missouri. As an example, he pointed to the Marshfield school district. In 2016, he said, Marshfield 313 candidates for four elementary teacher vacancies, but in 2020, they had only 27 candidates vying for five vacancies.
A reason for the shortage, Gerla said, was that fewer college students were choosing to become teachers.
“In 2000, 25-percent of everybody going into college were going into education,” he said. “Currently, it's just under 5-percent.” He added that last year, only one student at Missouri State University graduated with a math-education degree.
Gerla also said that not only does the teacher shortage mean that Ash Grove would have a harder time finding qualified teaching candidates to fill vacancies, but it meant that larger school districts would attempt to entice veteran teachers away from smaller districts.
“When the bigger schools do not have the candidates coming to them from (colleges, they've got to look to other schools to steal their people. The bottom line is, we don't want to be that school that we get our people stolen from.”

New legislation must also be considered:

The second factor that made recruiting and retaining teachers essential, Gerla said, is new Missouri state legislation, specifically, Missouri House Bill 1814, which he said, if passed, would permit open enrollment in the state.
“What that means,” he said, “is you don't have any district guidelines anymore. There are no district boundaries. If you live in Ash Grove, you could go wherever you want to school. If you live in Springfield, you can go wherever you want to school.”
Gerla said he expects the bill to pass, in part, because the Missouri School Board Association is supporting it. When the bill does pass, he added, parents would need a reason to keep their children enrolled in Ash Grove, when they could send them to Springfield, Republic or Willard. A four-day school week, he said, would give the district an advantage over them, but giving the district “the ability to recruit and retain the right people.”
$38,000 starting salary could hurt Ash Grove’s recruiting advantage:

A third factor, Gerla said, was that Gov. Mike Parson had proposed making $38,000 per year the minimum starting wage for teachers, with the state paying 70-percent of the funds necessary for a district to raise their pay, while the district chipped in the remaining 30-percent.
Gerla pointed out that Ash Grove is the highest paying district in its conference, but six of the nine districts in the conference are four-day-a-week schools.
“If the six of the nine that are current four-day school weeks end up going to this $38,000 minimum,” he said, “that takes away any advantage that we have to this point.”
Additionally, Gerla said that the four-day school week, combined with being able to offer the same pay as Ash Grove, would give the other districts an advantage over Ash Grove in recruiting newly-graduated teachers.
“If those people get $38,000 minimum, and they've got a four-day school week, when the new teachers come out from college where are they going to go? That’s a huge drawing point for those districts.”

Four-day week has no impact on student achievement, but offers other advantages:

Gerla also said that 119 Missouri school districts currently have four-day school weeks, and that number was expected to go up to 140 next year. He added that there was no data that showed that going to a four-day week helped or hurt student achievement, but there are other reasons for going to a four-day week.
“I've talked to about every superintendent around that is doing four-day school weeks right now,” he said, “and what they tell you is there's been very little change of any as far as student achievement goes, but what they say is there's so many other benefits to it, that if there's not a change to your student achievement, then why wouldn't you do it?”
Some other reasons Gerla gave for going to a four-day week included: increased morale for students, staff and faculty, higher student attendance, which would lead to higher student achievement, increased quality family time, and more time to faculty to plan classroom lessons.

Others also speak in favor of the four-day week:

During the meeting, the board also heard from other speakers who said they were in favor of going to a four-day school week. Lindsay Jackson, representing the district’s elementary teachers, said a four-day week would provide four immediate benefits for elementary students, including: improved attendance, improved student mental health, improved curriculum development and increased teacher retention and improved recruitment.
Another speaker was Cathy Akins, who read letters from other teachers in favor of going to the four-day school week. Finally, the board heard from Amanda Reece, who said that the four-day school week was a concept whose time had come in the same way technologies such as iPads, Chromebooks and smartboards had become part of classroom instruction.
After Gerla had finished his presentation, Bill Duncan, school board president, said the board had read many e-mails regarding the four-day school week, so they decided to hold the open meeting as a way to begin the fact-finding process for going to a school day week while “being as transparent as possible.” He added that the process would look at going to a four-day week in the 2023-24 School Year.
A video recording of the entire meeting can be viewed on the Ash Grove R-4 School District’s Facebook page, as well as Dr. Gerla’s PowerPoint presentation.

 
 
 

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