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Dale Sheppard English 12
Mrs. Roberts
Research Paper
The school week should be shortened for the following reasons: It could save millions of dollars; there would be less stress on students; there will be fewer absences from both students and teachers.
With the school week shortened there is a possibility of saving hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars! With the rising cost of things like fuel for heating or vehicles, or even both, to taxes and budgets, debts and
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every little thing that the school board spends their money on. Every little dollar counts. For example, in Peach County, Georgia when they shortened the week, substitute costs went down by 76 percent. Let’s say that Peach County was spending 100,000 dollars a year on substitutes, which is a reduction in costs of 76,000 dollars. 76,000 dollars can be used on a lot of good things for the students. Their transportation costs also went down significantly. It went down by 35 percent. If they spend 200,000 dollars a year on transportation, that is another 70,000 dollars saved. That money could be used for repairs for the buses or other transportation uses. Utility costs also went down; they went down by eight percent. A lot of school/school boards now-a-days are struggling with debts and bills because of taxes, unions demanding higher salary for teachers, and
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extracurricular activities such as sports teams or musical groups. With the taxes increasing, lots of schools are having to cut extracurricular activities or even things within the school. For example; in 2012 Nova Scotia school boards faced a 1.3 percent budget cut. The cut projected to be about 13.4 million dollars of the little over 1 billion dollar budget. Also, if facilities are used only four days per week instead of five, there is a significant reduction in utility costs to the system. Money spent to fund school breakfast and lunch programs are...