DES MOINES, Iowa — A year ago, the irony seemed cruel.

“We’d lost 30 teachers in three years,” says Dr. Bill Watson, superintendent of Martensdale-St. Marys schools.

Martensdale-St. Marys couldn’t find enough teachers to cover just over 500 students. But you could understand.

“We’re so close to Des Moines,” says teacher Kaylee Marchant, “that you can go somewhere else and get paid more for doing the same thing.”

Saydel had the same problems — keeping teachers employed and students focused.

Superintendent Todd Martin floated the idea of something radical.

“Our calendar committee,” he remembers, “began the conversation with a simple question: ‘is this something you might be interested in?’”

The answer — in both districts — was ‘yes.’ They’d move to a four-day school week.

Well, ten weeks in, these two tiny districts are walking tall.

“I just got done surveying our staff, parents, guardians, and students,” Martin says, “and we’ve had very favorable response from all three constituencies.”

“I see kids excited to learn, I see teachers engaged,” Watson concurs.

Watson says his schools are having no trouble fitting the same numbers of class hours into one fewer day. 

“It’s busy,” he says. “Our teachers, our kids are busy. We’re maximizing every minute of class time in the four days we’re here.”

Teachers like Joe Franey say behavioral problems are down; attendance and grades are up.

“We’re actually on a faster pace this year than what we were last year,” Franey says.

It actually makes sense, there’s now a consistent school week; no early outs, no Monday holidays.

“If you look back at our school calendar,” Marchant says, “we didn’t have many weeks that were actually a full five days last year.”

So back to the original problem — teacher retention. Once again, problem solved.

“For four openings last year at the elementary we had six applicants,” Watson says. “For one opening at the elementary this year, we had 19.”

“In the survey,” Martin says, “one of the questions we asked was ‘does this positively impact your decision to stay in our district?’ And well over 90% of our current staff have said ‘yes, this positively impacts my desire to stay here.’”

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