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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2008-07-19

An Idea Worth Throwing Up At The Wall . . . 

just to see if any part of it sticks.

The Rocky Mountain News editorialized today against a proposal for all state government offices to shift to a 4-day, 10-hour-a-day work week.

Marostica believes that legislation ordering a 10-hour, four-day week would ease traffic congestion, cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce wear and tear on highways. It might also cut the state's power bills if buildings could turn off the lights, heat and air conditioning an extra day.

The News actually makes a fairly compelling case against the proposal: state government exists to serve the public (at least in theory), and the public is poorly served by limiting their access to services.

However, if I may throw something out there . . .

there are a significant number of other pseudo-governmental bodies that might benefit from the option of a four-day work week. For instance . . . schools.

Rural and mountain school districts already have four-day weeks to limit the expense of bussing over huge distances. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't large suburban districts beginning to be in a position where bussing is going to be of enormous expense?

Many schools operate now on a block schedule where students only go to each class every other day for an extended amount of time--what would be the difference if they met longer each session and, instead of five sessions every two weeks, they only met four sessions every two weeks? To be honest, there are already so many weeks a year that are four-day weeks, it might be a little bit hard to tell the difference.

In exchange, large districts with large bus expenses would have their transportation costs cut by roughly 20%. That makes a HUGE difference in this day and age.

There would, obviously, have to be some understandings and concessions to athletic teams and other extra- and co-curricular activities. But, . . . .

I'm not saying this needs to be an actual policy proposal.

But I'd love to see a discussion. There are many ideas that need to be discussed in regard to education, and the current party in power doesn't seem to want to take any of them up.

Maybe this would be worth looking in to.
Posted by: Michael / 7/19/2008 01:28:00 AM

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