DEVERS, Texas — Right off Highway 90, between Houston and Beaumont, sits Devers ISD.
“I’ll just say it’s just the most unique place ever,” said Elizabeth Harris, the superintendent and principal of Devers ISD. “It’s a wonderful place for your children to go to school and get the foundation for high school.”
It’s a small school with one campus for grades pre-k through eighth. There are 206 kids and 27 staff members. Harris has been the district leader for 10 years. In early 2019, she asked the staff for their input on the next year’s schedule. One teacher, Zane Blank, suggested a four-day school week. Harris said she spent hours thinking over the schedule and how it would work.
The Texas Education Agency said in an email to Spectrum News 1 that school calendar decisions are made locally.
“As long as a district meets the threshold of 75,600 in-person operational minutes for the school year, they have the flexibility to institute a four-day week," the email reads.
Harris added 10 minutes to each school day to hit the TEA requirement. Kids start at 7:20 a.m. and end at 3:35 p.m. Breakfast and lunch are served Monday through Thursday.
Devers ISD tested out the four-day school week from 2019 to 2022. The pilot program ended in May. It was so successful the school board voted to go all-in and make it permanent.
There are thousands of teacher vacancies across the state. Some districts have switched to four-day weeks to keep them. That’s not the case for Devers ISD.
“Nobody wants to leave here,” Harris said. “Since I’ve been here, I have hired just a few teachers. They love it here. And they loved it here when it was five days a week.”
Steven Horelica, the fifth-grade teacher who’s also the bus driver and Devers’ mayor, said the four-day school week has benefited kids the most.
“This was not at all about trying to keep teachers around. People come here and realize what an awesome place it is. It’s a big family that you basically grew up with, and nobody wants to leave. So if it was still five days, I would still work here,” Horelica said. “But it was designed for the kids to help best meet their needs, allow them more family time, help them be more rested, enjoy school more, and give them more time for extracurricular activities. So it definitely was kid-oriented even though it has benefited us all.”
Harris said many parents already had Fridays off, others just make it work.
“I do own my own salon so they can go in back and do their thing, or they have a grandparent that watches them, or my sisters have helped too,” said Rachel Cessna, a Devers ISD parent and substitute teacher. “I feel like it takes a village.”
Cessna added that, because of the pandemic, some parents can now work remotely on Fridays. Harris said on their day off, students go hunting with their dads, travel for sports, or spend time with a grandparent or neighbor. Harris said many of their students’ dads work at the nearby Exxon or Chevron plants and already had every other Friday off.
“I have not had one parent conference phone call complaint. Not one,” Harris said. “It’s a miracle.”
Hayley Etheridge, the fourth-grade teacher at Devers ISD, said parents have thanked them for giving them time back with their kids.
“I think our grandparents were as thrilled as our parents were because we have a lot of kids that get a Grandparents Day once a week,” Etheridge said. “It’s been wonderful. No complaints whatsoever.”
Etheridge also said students come to school on Monday more energized now.
“Kids are asked to do more and more at younger ages, and burnout is real,” she said. “This has been the best tool that I’ve seen to ease student burnout. Everybody’s rested, and it’s better. The student performance is better.”
The four-day week has also drawn more students to Devers ISD. The district accepts kids from outside of the city.
“We look at it as a way to keep kids because we need those transfer students,” Etheridge said. “If we just went off of what is in the district, our classes would be half the size that they are. So we looked at it as a way to entice student enrollment. And it did for sure that because you know now the other schools in the area are starting to follow suit a little bit. We had a lot of kids come here just for that four-day school week.”
The shortened week also saves the district money. It doesn’t have to pay for air conditioning, heating, lighting, diesel, bus wear-and-tear, or substitute teacher pay on Fridays. The savings are reinvested into the school.
“All that money we can use for buying Chromebooks and much needed supplies for the kids,” Horelica said.
The schedule change did not affect teacher salaries. The starting salary is $55,500. Harris said teachers receive a yearly raise. Many have been with Devers ISD for a decade. The four-day week has made the district so popular that when there’s a rare teacher opening, someone’s ready to fill it.
Zane Blank is the second-grade teacher at Devers ISD and the brainchild of the four-day school week there. She said kids know they have to work hard Monday through Thursday.
“We work from the time we get here to the time we leave,” she said. “Other school districts that do not [have four-day school weeks seem to] go to school at the same time that we do, and they’re not getting the extra time to be a kid like we’re getting. And I feel like our kids are happy because we get that.”
Harris said students have always done well, but STAAR test results got even better last spring.
“Our kids scored 100% passing rate in every test, every subject, except for fifth-grade reading. And we were at 96%,” Harris said.
Harris understands that a shortened week is easier to implement in a smaller district with less logistics. But she says the decision to change the schedule has been a game-changer for the community, and one other districts should consider.