A school board in Southeast Iowa, between Ottumwa and Fairfield, has voted in favor of four-day school weeks, starting next year.

Now, all we need to do is get the radio business on board, and we'll be set.

The Cardinal Community School Board's Superintendent talked with KCCI in Des Moines and cited mental health, the pandemic, and a hopeful solution to help with the teacher shortage.

Superintendent Joel Pedersen says when it comes to attracting and keeping teachers, they're already seeing positive results.

"Two people that we approved to be teachers last night said, 'Hey, I wanna work for this new schedule.'", Pedersen said. "We had a couple people that were looking — they live about 30 miles away — and said 'hey I may look to go somewhere else but you know what? With this new schedule, we wanna stay.' "

The extra day off will only require an additional 25 to 30 minutes per day to reach the required number of classroom hours for the year.

While they've made the decision to take one extra day off per week, they haven't decided which day to take off. Those discussions will happen and a day will be decided.

Obviously, the correct choice is either Friday or Monday, because a 3-day weekend would be the best for everyone. A Wednesday off would be cool, but surely not as effective.

Many applaud the change, with parents commenting on a Facebook post relating to the story.

Jen wrote, "I went to the first school in SD to implement a 4 day week, back in 1995. As a student, I loved having every Friday consistently off and the longer periods the other days to get work done (no homework). As a parent now, I appreciate it from a quality of life perspective - arranging appointments on the day off, no trying to remember what days were early out for pd, etc. Honestly, I wish all schools went 4 days a week, year round."

"This such a great idea. Children shouldn’t have to strain themselves mentally emotionally and physically to learn. Give them some days off to study and relax. I love this!" Tessa commented.

Many others raised concern for the working parents with young children.

"This will hurt those parents that work like two jobs and would have hard time finding/paying babysitter," Apisath wrote.

Read more at KCCI 

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