Four-day school week: Rural schools deserve more

Imagine being a student in rural Alberta. After a long commute, you arrive at school at 8:00 a.m., only to find your teacher walking in after an equally exhausting journey. Ahead of you is a longer school day, with an extra hour added to compensate for the lost day under a new four-day school week. Your teacher, on the other hand, is not only looking ahead at a longer day of instruction, but also the challenge of managing multiple subjects and multiple grades as shrinking staff numbers stretch resources thin.

This is quickly becoming the reality for students and teachers at small rural schools like Byemoor’s, where declining enrolment, teacher shortages, and funding pressures have pushed the school to adopt a four-day school week. Declining enrolment and financial pressures have already forced some rural communities across the province to close their schools, leaving the rest to find new ways to keep their doors open. These changes raise questions about the future of rural education and its community as a whole.

The switch to a four-day school week may provide a temporary solution to the funding issues. It does not, however, address the larger challenges, such as declining enrolment, lack of teachers, mounting workloads, and the burden it places on the children’s families. The provincial government must move beyond short-term cost-saving measures and develop a sustainable approach that supports rural families, boosts enrolment, and incentivizes educators to stay long-term.

The shortened week allows schools to address their budget constraints. The burden, however, shifts to the parents. Many rural families work full-time in industries such as agriculture, health care, and trades, where flexible schedules are not always an option. An additional weekday at home often means paying for extra child care, reducing work hours, and relying on relatives to take care of their children. On top of that, rural communities often have fewer child-care facilities, further complicating the situation. 

This initiative undoubtedly places an additional strain on families, but teachers face their own set of challenges under the new schedule. Extending the remaining four school days by an hour preserves instructional time, but it does not reduce the teachers’ responsibilities outside the classroom, such as preparing lesson plans and marking assignments. In Byemoor’s case, some teachers also commute up to 70 kilometres every day. Despite reducing the number of commuting days, this approach does not address the root causes of the challenges facing rural educators, raising questions about who actually benefits from these changes.

While the shorter instructional hours may temporarily prevent burnout of teachers, the province must focus on addressing the difficulty in attracting and retaining teachers. Funding issues, long commute times, and multi-grade classrooms often make rural schools a less appealing option for educators. The province, therefore, could explore solutions such as teacher housing support and relocation benefits. Historically, many rural communities provided housing for teachers, who eventually became members of those communities. Reviving similar approaches today could help make rural teaching a more sustainable and attractive career option.

Closing rural schools or adopting measures such as a four-day school week may help address declining enrolment and funding pressures in the short-term, but these solutions merely shift the burden onto students, teachers, and families. Longer commutes make education less accessible and more physically and mentally demanding, while the loss of local schools weakens the communities they serve. Alberta must address the deeper challenges facing rural education and ensure that geography does not determine a student’s access to quality education.