CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Superintendent Roland Hernandez said CCISD is paying attention to statewide discussions about four-day school weeks.
"What makes is difficult for us is serving, you know, 34,000 students and transporting close to 10,000 students a day with transportation services, it's going to be a much bigger issue to tackle," he said.
One common theme among districts that have already made the switch -- they tend to be much smaller, and in more rural areas, than CCISD.
"Logistically and realistically for a district our size, the burden that we would put on families that work five-day work weeks to have to arrange for childcare and things like that on that, on that off day, would be pretty difficult," said CCISD Board of Trustees President Don Clark.
District officials said keeping kids in school Monday-Friday makes more sense, since they're already involved in extracurriculars on Fridays.
Hernandez said a reason why some might want a four-day school week results from burnout and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Clark explained another reason why it could help.
"I think you're giving some opportunity for additional time off for teachers,” he said. “Maybe a little bit of a reset for them — and I'm certainly sympathetic to that. Unfortunately, again, when we're dealing with 34,000 students and 6,000 employees, that logistic is pretty tough to overcome."
While Hernandez and Clark did not rule out the possibility of a shorter school week in the future, they said CCISD needs to see how other large school districts find a way to make it work first.
"Maybe when districts our more our size are finding ways to make it more manageable, then that might be a different time,” Hernandez said. “But right now, that's not possible with the way that we're operating."