Just saw this headline on MyYahoo! page. It’s an article from the Indianapolis Star newspaper.
With 4-day school week, districts may save on fuel
Now, aside from my initial sarcastic thought of, “Duh!, Isn’t that like saying if I don’t drive as much I’ll spend less on gas, or in order to win the game we’re going to have to score some points!”, here’s the thoughts by the folks.
So here’s a fresh idea: Go to a four-day week, Tuesday through Friday. By adding a mere hour and 20 minutes or so each day, the instructional time requirements could be met.
In addition, there would also be savings in the winter because the school won’t need to be heated on the extra day each week. However, I do wonder if they’d actually adjust the thermostats down for that day. Do schools turn the thermostats down for the weekends now?
I do think it’s a great idea, and the article even addresses one of the bigger concerns against the idea. How do single parents or families with both parents working take care of their child at home now while they’re at work?
We are experiencing this slight challenge ourselves this morning in my family. Our son has strep throat (an annual occurence for me as a boy so I guess, like-father-like-son) and my wife has begun working again part time to help with increasing our income. Luckily she works the majority of the time from home, but does have to go into the “office” on Tuesday’s and Thursdays.
We were able to get my mom to come and watch the kids this morning, but she has a doctor’s appointment at noon 30 minutes away from our home. Therefore, I need to take an early and long lunch to be at home with the kids until my wife gets home around 2:30pm.
With all of these challenges, it just seems like more and more reasons why things just might have been better in the “good ‘ol days”. Priorities where there and the family was always taken care of in these life challenges.