MCHS students write to state lawmakers

By Theo Tate
Posted 3/25/23

With the four-day school week gaining popularity in Missouri, language arts teachers from Montgomery County High School decided to give their students an assignment in early March.

Students …

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MCHS students write to state lawmakers

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With the four-day school week gaining popularity in Missouri, language arts teachers from Montgomery County High School decided to give their students an assignment in early March.

Students wrote letters to State Representatives Bruce Sassmann and Jeff Myers about their opinions of the four-day school week. Sassmann represents District 61, which serves a part of Montgomery County and all of Osage and Gasconade counties. Myers is the District 42 representative, serving Montgomery and Warren counties.

Megan McClintock, Julie Ellis, Karen Milner and Jenny Gastler are the language arts teachers. Almost 100 students from the four classes wrote letters.

“We gave students the opportunity to write to their state rep about the four-day school week,” McClintock said. “Of course, we were hoping they would write in favor of the four-day school week. But we made sure we told them, ‘If you want to go to the five days and you don’t like the four-day school week, you are free to write about that and we’ll send your letter.’”

McClintock said 25 of her students wrote to Sassmann. Within a few weeks, her class received returned letters from Sassmann.

“To all of my students who wrote, he wrote a very nice thank you for your letter back,” McClintock said. “I found them in my mailbox and passed them out to my students. They were so excited. Most of them didn’t want to open the envelope because it had the state seal on it. They thought it was so cool that they were getting this piece of literature from someone who mattered.”

McClintock said all of the language arts teachers spent their professional development day in February by designing a template of writing about the four-day school week. They introduced the project the following day.

McClintock said after skimming through the letters, her students gave legitimate reasons for the R-II School District to keep the four-day school week.

“A lot of them were mental health reasons,” McClintock said. “They got their weekends back. It (Monday) was their day to relax or get caught up on school work. Almost all of my juniors mentioned something about Monday being a day that they could work and earn money for their families. If they could work on Mondays, they could still be a kid and still have one weekend day to be a high schooler and do fun things high school kids do.”

The R-II School District is in its 12th year of having a four-day school week schedule. All schools are in session Tuesday through Friday.

In August 2011, R-II became the fourth district in the state to go to a four-day week, joining Lathrop, Albany and Harrisburg. It was also the largest school district in the state to switch to a four-day week.

According to the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, there are currently 144 school districts that have a four-day a week schedule, most of them are in rural areas. In December, the Independence School District, which has 14,000 students, adopted a four-day school week for the 2023-24 school year, making it the largest school district in Missouri to make the switch. Warren County School District, which has 3,000 students, is the second largest.

“It’s a very big deal,” said McClintock, who is in her 15th year with the R-II School District. “I think it’s hard for a lot of politicians who are working four-day weeks themselves to tell us we shouldn’t be allowed to have it. I’m a big proponent of local control. It feels like a lot of politicians don’t care about the rural areas. It took a big city school passing of the four-day school week for it to become an issue.”

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