There are times when the words for this space have to shy away from the norm and not be so much about lemonade, but about pressing local matters. But I promise you we will find some lemonade before we are finished.
This week, the subject is a crucial one to our area and that is the 4-day school week.
A lot of our local districts adopted going to the four-day week many years ago when the option first became available. It originally was a tool that local districts could use to retain good teachers and handle financial constraints, but over the last 10 years it has evolved into much more.
It is a good thing for our smaller rural districts, and it takes nothing away from their educating their students. Speaking as someone who has grandchildren in Malta, a four-day week school, I can tell you from personal experience that it is a good thing.
Covering the school districts around our area since the four-day week became an option, I can also tell you with confidence that the districts using it have used it well, and it has not impacted test scores or district ratings.
In fact, in the recent ratings released by the Texas Education Agency, the schools in our area that use a four-day school week fared very well and on the same level as districts in the area that stayed with a five-day week.
More important to me, my friends that are superintendents at our four day week districts tell me what an advantage and benefit it has been for them and their students.
That is all I need to know. Especially when you factor in that it is politicians in Austin, most notably Texas Education Agency Director Mike Morath, who is working to get rid of the four-day week option.
I am not sure that Morath understands the ins and outs of small, rural districts like most of ours in Northeast Texas. Nor does he understand that teachers and administrators in our neck of the woods work year after year for far less than they should make and that the four-day week helps them.
I mean, you tell me a local teacher that works for one of our four-day week schools that doesn’t work five, six or even seven days a week anyway. I would challenge anybody to contest the fact that our local schoolteachers go above and beyond the minimum. Of all the ones that I know personally, there is not one that doesn’t consider what they do a higher calling rather than a paycheck.
If that was all they were looking for, they would work elsewhere.
I found it encouraging last week to see Chris Spencer voice his opinion on this issue. Spencer will undoubtedly be our next state representative for House District 1 and in a social media post last week he stated, “Texas needs to retain this option to recruit more qualified teachers into the system who may otherwise leave the profession for higher pay and a better quality of life.
Teachers and parents alike that I speak with enjoy the four-day week.
As State Representative, I will fight to keep this option for schools and families.”
Bottom line, the decision to be a four-day week school or a five should be left on the local level and made by those who live here and know what is best and what works for our kids.
And that is not just what I think.
An even stronger endorsement for local control comes from former House District 1 State Rep. Gary VanDeaver.
VanDeaver is now the Executive Director for the Texas Association of School Boards. When I asked him directly this week about the issue and where he and TASB stand on it, he said, “We support the local school board having the authority to make that decision based on what they believe is best for their local school.”
I don’t know about you my friends, but that right there is some pretty good lemonade for this week.
2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is Godbreathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” Around here, our school teachers use their faith to teach our children.
Talk about some lemonade, there’s ya some.
