The enormous 167-page education bill, Senate Bill (SB) 727, recently passed out of the Missouri Senate and is heading to the House. There are a number of reforms in the Senate’s proposal, including:
| – Education savings account (ESA) expansion
– Charter school expansion – New voting procedures for moving to a four-day school week – Re-establishment of required minimum days of instruction in certain school districts – Aid bonus for districts that meet new minimum-day requirements |
– Reworking of how students are counted for the funding formula
– Creation of a new evidence-based home reading program – Increase in teacher salaries – Ability to implement pay differentiation for certain hard-to-staff teachers – Creation of a scholarship program targeting hard-to-staff subject areas and schools |
My colleagues and I will delve into the various reforms in the days and weeks ahead, but here the focus will be on the new procedures and requirements relating to the four-day school week (4dsw).
First, this bill would establish a new voting procedure for larger districts that want to use a 4dsw schedule.
Under the new procedures in the bill, the district school board must pass the measure to implement a 4dsw. Then, the school board–approved proposal will go to a vote by the public. The vote would take place at the next date available for public elections. If a majority of votes are in favor, the 4dsw will be established.
However, this provision is limited, as this requirement only applies to school districts located wholly or partially in a county with a charter form of government, or located wholly or partially in a city with more than 30,000 inhabitants.
Essentially, this provision would be limited to school districts in or partially in St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson County, Clay County, St. Charles County, St. Joseph, Springfield, Columbia, Joplin, Jefferson City, and Cape Girardeau. According to my analysis of the bill language, only around 100 school districts and charter schools (about 20% of districts and charters) will be subject to this voting provision.
This voting measure would likely better represent parental preferences, but why are smaller communities excluded from this new policy? Additionally, without open enrollment or greater educational choice policies in Missouri, there will still be numerous families trapped in a 4dsw district despite preferring a different schedule.
This bill also includes reforms regarding the minimum number of school days for districts. Back in 2018, SB 743 changed instructional time requirements in Missouri. At that time, public schools were required to be in session a minimum of 174 days and 1,044 hours a year—but with SB 743, the requirement became only 1,044 hours with no required number of days. Following this change (which took effect in the 2019–20 school year), the number of 4dsw districts in Missouri shot up from 34 to 62, and has since increased to 173 in 2023–2024, according to my own calculations.
SB 727 would re-establish a minimum number of required days in a school year (the 1,044 hour minimum will also remain in place):
- 169 days for five-day school week districts
- 142 days for four-day school week districts
This provision is also limited. The minimum number of days requirement, as with the voting provision, will only apply to school districts in the larger cities and counties mentioned above. Of those roughly 100 districts, only five use a 4dsw, and all already meet the 142-day minimum requirement. In fact, around 87% of all 4dsw districts in 2022–2023 had 142 or more instructional days. (It should be noted that the 169-day limit for 5dsw districts is still rather low—over 30 states have a minimum of 180 days or more. Not a single district or charter school in Missouri reached 180 instructional days in 2022–2023, outside of two charter Pre-K programs.)
While smaller districts may not be subject to the minimum day requirement, SB 727 has a separate provision that incentivizes creating more school days in a different way.
The bill states that any district that provided 169 school days or more will be remitted an amount equal to 1% of its annual state aid entitlement for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, and 2% for 2028 and onward. All monies from this additional aid must be used exclusively to increase teacher salaries. If a district does not meet the 169-day minimum, it is not punished, but it does not receive the extra money. This provision appears to be an attempt to incentivize a five-day school week schedule.
In a recently published literature review that I authored with James Shuls, we noted that districts justify their move to a 4dsw based on district finances or teacher retention and recruitment. Using numbers from the 2022–2023 school year and assumptions based on what the SB 727 fiscal note includes, I found that a 1% aid bonus would equate to an average of around $24,000 for districts that used a 4dsw in the 2022–2023 school year and a 2% aid bonus would equate to an average of around $48,000. On average, a 2% aid bonus for 4dsw districts would be equivalent to around 0.6% of a 4dsw district’s total expenses—not a huge sum to incentivize a major schedule change.
(For 5dsw districts, the average 2% aid bonus is around $173,000—equating to an average 0.5% of their expenses. It should also be noted that these calculations are based on 532 of the 553 districts and charters).
In 2022–2023, around 466 school districts and charters did not have 169 instructional days or more. About 30 districts and charters had 168 days of instruction, and about 110 districts and charters had 164 to 167 days of instruction. SB 727 will most likely move all of these districts to 169 days and incentivize other 5dsw districts to increase instructional days. If the goal of this part of the bill is to increase the number of days most Missouri students are in school, SB 727 could accomplish this.
However, if the goal of this part of the bill is to begin moving the 173 4dsw districts back to a 5dsw, this provision will probably be ineffective. It is too little money for too big a change, and many districts may argue that the savings they receive from using a 4dsw is higher than the aid they could receive. The fiscal note for this bill estimates that the state could end up paying districts $75 million via these bonuses. If there’s extra money lying around, wouldn’t it be better to spend it on something else, such as increasing funding for the ESA program?
With talks of more districts potentially moving to a 4dsw in the 2024–2025 school year, it will be interesting to see if the 4dsw will continue to rapidly grow in Missouri. For now, it does not appear that SB 727 creates any significant incentive to buck that trend.
