4-Day School Week Process & Committee Work
On this page, you will have access to Emmett School district's 2024-2025 draft calendars, informational flyers, information on 4-day and 5-day school calendars, summaries of the work of the ESD Calendar Committee, data, and an outline of the process moving forward. Please review what we have provided and let us know your feedback through parent, staff, and community surveys.
On the right, you will find the draft calendar options. You will also find informational flyers and links to research and data compiled from the calendar committee. Finally, we've included a timeline of what can be expected moving forward. All PDFs are printable.
This information was provided at our Community meeting on January 11, 2024. This meeting contained important presentations and information that are important to this topic. If you were unable to attend, you can still view the meeting at the link below. We encourage everyone to view the meeting and be involved.
Please Read!
Emmett School District has tried to present the community with information regarding the school calendar options for next year. We’ve shared flyers and have information available on our website of what we’ve done and the benefits and considerations we’ve identified. We have not included solutions that may have been discussed because some of those solutions may not be seen as adequate by everyone. The information provided is not meant to sway you in a certain direction but to simply present both sides of the issue. There may be some things that some would argue don’t belong or aren’t presented correctly. That’s fine. We wanted to provide talking points, a summary report, and a foundation for discussion.
As ESD’s Public Information Officer and Community Liaison, I have tried very hard to create a balanced, accurate overview with the material provided. After spending the last few months thoroughly investigating this issue, I can honestly say that I see both sides. More importantly, I believe both sides are true. Here is my very simplified summary that doesn’t do either side justice:
Emmett struggles retaining and recruiting staff. The anecdotal reports from other 4-day districts say that a 4-day school schedule sees very high satisfaction from staff, students, and families. I believe both of those to be completely true.
On the other side, good, highly reliable data from multiple sources says that districts on a 4-day week have lower academic performance, especially in that learning growth is at a slower rate that is most evident in the middle school years. I believe that data to be true and reliable, and I believe that it features good school districts who are doing what we are doing—trying their best with what they have.
I encourage everyone to believe both sides and not to discount or discredit the other side. They both have merit. They both have value and deserve to be respected. With both sides being true, it’s important to then recognize the unique challenges that Emmett has. We can’t do as Middleton or the other districts. We can only do Emmett. Please form your opinion based on the three calendar options Emmett can provide—not what you wish they were, but what they are.
Finally, I challenge you to form your opinion not on what you and your family would like most, but on what would be best for the students of Gem County. We want to hear your opinion and we value your voices. It will form a piece of the puzzle that the school board will use to make a decision that will impact us all. Whatever the school board decides, we as a school district will have work to do. If the decision is a 5-day calendar, we will look at other options to recruit and retain teachers—this isn’t the only way to do that. We will do our best to show our staff that we value them and make Emmett a great place to work. If the decision is a 4-day calendar, we will adapt and try our very best to not be another statistic that says academics are impacted by 4-day.
There are no guarantees. Which is why we are asking for your input. Please look at the material provided, believe all of it, and then give us your opinion on which of the three calendar options is best for our students.
--Amanda Weers
ESD Public Information Officer/Community Liaison
2024-2025 Calendar Draft Options
Board Approved Calendar
The ESD School Board has chosen a 4-day calendar. The following is the most updated calendar for the 2024-2025 School Year.
Calendar Survey Results
Timeline
January 11:
Public Meeting
January 12:
Parent Survey
Week of January 15
Staff, Student, & Community Surveys
February 12:
Possible School Board decision on Calendar Committee recommendation