MARTENSDALE, Iowa — Losing teachers to bigger districts at an alarming clip, tiny Martensdale-St. Marys (MSTM) was stuck.

“They’d get offers from places like Norwalk or Des Moines and we couldn’t compete,” said MSTM superintendent, Dr. Bill Watson.

Unable to raise salaries, the district would then struggle to fill the open positions.

“At the end of the 2023-2024 school year, we had 15 open positions,” Watson said. “For each one of those openings, we averaged less than one applicant.”

What’s more, many of those applicants had little or no teaching experience.

“We had to try something different,” said Watson.

Following the lead of some even smaller districts in southern Iowa, Martensdale-St. Marys decided to implement a four-day school week. It combined slightly longer school days running Tuesday-Friday to meet the state requirement for class hours. Teachers shaved 40 working days off their calendars. Students cut their time in school significantly, as well.

On this final day of this revolutionary school year, we paid another visit to MTSM.

“The feedback that I got from teachers, parents, students, all staff was fantastic,” said Beth Happe, principal of MSTM Elementary School.

Happe told us the benefits to the shortened school week were almost too extensive to list.

“All of our professional development has been on one Monday of the month, so we don’t have early outs, we don’t have a random day off for professional development, and when we had a snow day, we could easily make it up on a Monday.”

Happe said her teachers were happier, more focused, and needed less time off.

“Everyone used Mondays — if they could — for those appointments that you can’t get after 4 o’clock on a teacher’s schedule,” she said. “You know, doctors, dentists, eye doctors, what have you — and parents got used to doing the same thing.”

Terah Henson — both a teacher at MSTM and the parent of two students — said her family used the extra time in a variety of ways.

“My son is 17,” she told us, “and he was able to get a job on Mondays. So Monday was his day to work and he could worry about school and his homework the rest of the week.”

Though school days were nearly an hour longer, Henson says she and other teachers barely noticed.

“The days did not seem longer. Quite honestly, they were jam-packed full of learning and engagement.”

Asked if he’d found any drawbacks to the four-day weeks, Watson had to pause to think.

“The five-day weeks we had to make up snow days — kids and staff were a little bit grumpy those weeks,” he laughed. “But I think overall I’d give it an ‘A.’”

And Watson brought receipts.

Numbers gathered throughout the year show student grades and test scores up significantly. Eight of nine levels improved in math testing; two of three improved in science testing. Discipline referrals had fallen 75% at the midway point of the school year.

What’s more, MTSM had a net gain of 41 open-enrolled students this year — an 86% jump from the year prior. That’s more money for the district.

But of all the impressive numbers MSTM has in its hand, now, the ones that stand out most might be those which brought the problem to light in the first place: staff retention and replacement.

Again, Watson quotes them from memory.

“We had less than one applicant two years ago for 15 openings,” he says. “This year we had five openings for next school year, and we had greater than 12 applicants for each of those positions.”

The Saydel School District made the same change this school year and was reporting the same success at semester. WHO 13 will check in with superintendent Todd Martin when the Saydel school year ends in June.

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