Lake Roosevelt to move to four-day school week in 2025-26

Following a public hearing Nov. 25, school directors decided students will attend Lake Roosevelt Schools for four days each week instead of five, beginning in the fall of 2025.

People at the hearing expressed support and concerns, urged the board to consider how it would affect academic progress, and questioned whether enough research had been done into the idea.

Superintendent Rod Broadnax assured people the decision would have no impact on the district funds and the board’s decision would have to be based on what’s best for the kids.

Board member Alex Tufts said there has been a lot of research done into it that shows the benefits are many. In fact, although someone in the audience said 18 other districts in Washington have gone to a four-day week, he said, that’s by far the lowest number of any neighboring state: 76 in Idaho; 136 in Oregon, about three quarters of its districts.

One 11-year study, he said, showed that Native American students “progressed in math scores better than in a five-day school week.”

The proposed schedule will actually give teachers more time with their students, proponents said, and Friday absenteeism is big problem at the school.

That may be affected by the fact that most people at two major workplaces in the area, the Colville Tribes and the Bureau of Reclamation, work on a 4/10 schedule — four days a week, 10 hours a day. But board members said the move isn’t about meshing with some families’ schedules.

“It’s not about the families, it’s about what’s best for the kids,” board member Shannon Nicholson said.

She said she didn’t like that the research doesn’t show a big improvement in academic scores, “but you do see an improvement with attendance; and you can’t belittle the fact that attendance does increase academic performance.”

Board member Buffy Nicholson made the motion to try the four-day schedule for one school year.

“Our teachers are amazing, and I think that they will be able to use this extra time to really develop our kids and meet them where they are, and have time and opportunity in the classroom to structure that learning for our kids,” she said. “COVID impacted some kids way more than it did other kids, and our teachers are the only ones that can really address that, and we’re not going to know unless we give them that opportunity. And I think that they deserve it.”

“What we’ve been doing in the past doesn’t seem to be working the way we hope that our school would be improving,” board member George LaPlace said. “You can’t learn if you’re not here. If this helps our attendance, then it’s worth, well, whatever struggles are going to come with it to go to a four-day, because the teachers will have to learn a slightly different way of doing their classes.”

The board passed Buffy Nicholson’s motion unanimously, setting next fall as the start of a pilot program year for the four-day schedule.

Broadnax wrote on the district website Monday that a draft of the 2025 – 2026 school year calendar is available but the board will vote on the calendar within the next few months.