Breckenridge ISD Approves Switch to 4-Day School Week

BRECKENRIDGE — Breckenridge Independent School District has approved plans to move to a 4-day school week next school year.

Back in January, the Breckenridge ISD school board voted unanimously to switch to a 4-day school week over the usual 5-day school week for the 2023-2024 school year. A three-person sub-committee studied the plan for several months and surveyed the school employees and families.

One reason Breckenridge ISD chose to change is to help recruit teachers and keep them in the district longer. Also, since COVID, teachers across the United States report being burned out in the career which involved them grading papers and coming up with lesson plans before or after regular school hours.

Breckenridge ISD Superintendent Bryan Allen spoke about Breckenridge’s teacher shortage and the hardships of the recruitment of new teachers. Allen has seen at least three schedules that are being considered.

Schools are required to have 76,500 minutes of operational or instructional minutes each year so the number of hours students are in school each day may increase, and holiday breaks might be shorter.

Now that Breckenridge has approved the new schedule, the school board and administration will look into planning the details of what will go into the four-day school week.

In the Concho Valley, Winters ISD recently went to a four-day school week.