School Week Decision at LGISD Down to Two Choices

5-Day or Hybrid Plans Being Considered

A strictly four-day school week is no longer an option at La Grange ISD.

After some tweaks based on teacher feedback, now the district’s school board will decide later this month, between two plans – a return to the traditional five-day week, or a hybrid plan that calls for fivedays weeks in August, September, January and February, and four-day weeks (with Fridays off) the others months of the school year.

That hybrid plan would include 161 days of class next year.

The five-day plan would include 169 class days next year.

The change comes about after some teachers expressed concern about lost instruction time in a true four-day week plan, and the inequality between semesters in previous hybrid options.

“I’m proud of our teachers. It would have been really easy to just want the extra days off, but when you care about education you want what’s best for kids,” said La Grange superintendent Andy McHazlett.

“We went back to the drawing board. Student outcomes are still the top priority.”

The district recently surveyed teachers and staff about the two plans (5-day or the new hybrid) and overall 85.3 percent of the school employees favored the new hybrid.

The potential change to the school calender had been considered by LGISD (and lots of other districts around the state) as a way to stem the tide of losing teachers and encourage more teaching applicants.

Recently the Texas Education Agency released one of the first looks at test results at five-day-a-week schools compared to four-day-a-week schools.

In the study released last month, key findings were: “In 2022–23, 4-dayschool- week students had lower performance than 5-day-school-week students in Grades 6-8 STAAR-RLA (state reading testing) and Grades 4-6 STAAR-Mathematics (state math testing). These differences were significant in a logistic regression that controlled for prior-year achievement scores.

• The percentage of students at 5-day-school-week campuses who met the STAAR Meets Grade Level standard in Reading-language Srts was 6-8 percentage points higher on average than students attending 4-day-school-week campuses.

• The percentage of students at 5-day-school-wweek campuses who met the STAAR Meets Grade Level standard in mathematics was 5-8 percentage points higher on average than students attending 4-day-school-week campuses.”

McHazlett said he was aware of that report but said that he believed that anytime you have a change at a school there will be a drop because there’s a learning adjustment for students and teachers, and that data might not accurately reflect results of a hybrid approach like La Grange is considering.

“We’re trying to balance what’s best for the kids and the staff. That’s what we are here for to educate kiddos,” McHazlett said. “Honestly, I’m comfortable with either option.”