It was near the end of fourth period, and John Crabill’s internal clock was ticking.

Eight minutes left. Enough time — after a discussion running the gamut from economics to nationalism — to touch on military strength as a factor in imperialism.

For Crabill, a history teacher at Nampa’s Skyview High School, time is finite — carved into increments of 71-minute class periods, crammed into a four-day weekly schedule. More classroom hours, as district officials note, but the time is packed into fewer school days.

Crabill enjoys the work-life balance that comes with three-day weekends, but on the job, he feels like he’s been in a constant state of catch-up. But in the midst of a school year filled with transitions, he sees some stability and normalcy coming up out of the turmoil.

“I think we all knew this year was going to be rough,” Crabill said during a recent free period. “There’s definitely some optimism going to next year.”

A year of turbulence

This fall, Nampa joined 75 Idaho school districts and 19 charter schools that operate on a four-day calendar. Historically, four-day schools have been scattered across the state’s rural stretches. With 12,600 students, Nampa is by far Idaho’s largest four-day district.

In the first year of the transition, Nampa Superintendent Gregg Russell has seen several things he likes.

Fall Idaho Reading Indicator scores are up slightly from a year ago — although barely half of Nampa’s kindergarten through third-grade students are at grade level. “We definitely are not seeing a large dip being on the four-day week.”

(March IRI scores also were encouraging, the district says: 61% of K-3 students were scoring at grade level, up from 59% the previous year.)

With teacher attendance up and absenteeism down, Nampa used about 500 fewer substitute teacher days for the fall. That could be a sign that teachers are using Fridays to take care of medical appointments and other personal commitments. But consistent with the four-day transition, causes and effects aren’t clear. Russell stops short of linking the four-day calendar to the reduced absentee rate.

And Nampa started the year with just two teacher vacancies, down from 13 a year ago — perhaps an early sign that Nampa is doing a better job of recruiting teachers in a valley where Boise and West Ada offer higher salaries, and many rural districts also offer the four-day schedule.

But Nampa is a messy lab setting for a four-day rollout. In Idaho’s fourth-largest school district, change is everywhere.

School closures. New school boundaries. A new bus carrier. And in high schools like Skyview, a switch from a block schedule, with students attending classes on an alternating “A/B” calendar, to a traditional schedule. Either change — adopting the four-day week or abandoning the block schedule — would have been a big adjustment, Russell said.

In a year of turbulence in Nampa, it’s difficult to gauge the four-day schedule’s impacts — positive or negative.

‘Get it done and rip the Band-Aid off’

As he wrestled with the four-day issue, Nampa school trustee Jeff Kirkman used his high school-aged kids as a reality check. Kirkman assumed his kids would be excited about a four-day week and the promise of Fridays off.

“They wanted to stay on a five-day week,” he said. “It kind of surprised me.”

Last April — a year ago this week — Kirkman voted against the move to a four-day schedule. Trustees adopted the move on a narrow 3-2 vote.

Kirkman said he was worried about one more big change, on top of so many other changes. He asked Russell about it, and said he could understand the superintendent’s thinking: If the district is going to make changes, it makes sense to do them all at once. “Get it done and rip the Band-Aid off,” said Kirkman, reflecting on the conversation.

Now, Kirkman says many of his fears didn’t come to pass. He was worried kids would roam the streets on Fridays, unsupervised and undirected. But he credits community organizations like the Boys and Girls Club and the local recreation center with stepping up their Friday programs — and Kirkman believes a larger district has more options for such partnerships.

Kirkman still has questions about the four-day week. He’s concerned about how special education students are faring, and he’d prefer a shorter day for the elementary school kids. But as a whole, he believes patrons are adjusting. “I haven’t heard anybody say, ‘Let’s do away with this.’”

Kirkman also reports a change of heart at home. The four-day week gives his kids Fridays to catch up on sleep or homework — or, on one recent weekend, the time for Kirkman and his daughter to cross the state to Rexburg for a dance competition. Kirkman says his high schoolers are on board with the new schedule.

And so is Kirkman. And while he takes pains to say he is speaking just for himself, he says Nampa needs to stay the course. “I think we’ve got to give it a year or two, or maybe even three years, to see really what’s going on.”

‘We just figure we will deal with one issue at a time’

The four-day transition has been a challenge for Khloe Sandoval. Long days and late buses. 

An eighth-grader at Nampa’s East Valley Middle School, Khloe wakes up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. to get ready for school. She has after-school activities and usually gets home around 6:30 p.m. After homework, she says, she’s usually ready for sleep by about 7:30 p.m.

And for the first half of the year, Khloe started many days playing catch-up. Her bus to school was late almost every day — a common problem, during Nampa’s turbulent transition to a new carrier. She was often late for her first period art class, and spent many lunch periods scrambling to make up the work. “I just had to work extra hard to make sure I got it done.”

By February, her parents decided to do something to help Khloe get to school on time.

They bought a different house, moving their family across town.

Their three school-aged children, including Khloe, stayed in the same Nampa schools. But now, the family lives closer to East Valley. Khloe is on a new, quicker bus route that usually gets her to school in time. Khloe’s mother, Jessica, can see the difference in her daughter already. She’s getting a little more sleep on school nights, and her grades are improving.

“I feel like the best thing we could have done for Khloe was move,” Jessica said recently. “I’ve definitely noticed since we moved, over the last couple of weeks, her stress level has come down tremendously.”

Still, Jessica thinks the transition has been tougher on elementary school kids — like her two sons, Matthew and Noah.

Noah is a kindergartner at New Horizons Dual Language Magnet Elementary School. By the time Jessica drives him home, it’s about 4:30 p.m. “He’s so tired and hungry, he doesn’t get to be a kid.”

Jessica says Noah is adjusting and doing well, aside from being constantly hungry at school. But she’s convinced the four-day schedule and the long school days contributed to a continual churn of illnesses from kindergarten to home: pneumonia, bronchitis, the flu, colds, strep throat. In November, Noah could attend only four days of school.

“They’re tired, and their little bodies are saying, ‘We can’t do this anymore,’” she said.

In December, Jessica said she and her husband were weighing options for their kids for 2025-26 — including switching to another district, or homeschooling. They have since decided to stay in Nampa schools. “Our life is centered in Nampa,” Jessica said. “We just figure we will deal with one issue at a time that the district gives us.”

That means their youngest daughter, Sofia, will follow Noah, and begin kindergarten at New Horizons this fall.

Like many people in Nampa, the Sandovals’ week now revolves around Fridays, and the beginning of the weekend. The Sandovals own a small painting business, which makes it easier to work a short Friday and head out for camping. Otherwise, Fridays are a day for Matthew and Noah to catch up playing with neighborhood kids.

Khloe says she spends her Fridays catching up on homework or chores, or just chilling out. It depends on the week, she says. But she doesn’t think the options are worth the tradeoffs.

“Personally, I’d rather go Monday through Friday.”

New Friday routines for students and staff

Routines, easily established, can be hard to shake. And it didn’t take long for no-school Fridays to become a part of the norm for Nampa students.

Accustomed to a Monday-Thursday school week, high school students struggle with blips in the routine. When school is closed for a Monday holiday, and school is in session Tuesday through Friday, high school absences spike on Fridays. Sometimes, it’s because a student has a Friday work shift. But not always.

During one recent Friday, when Nampa High School was in session after a Monday holiday, Brian Coffey could see the difference. For whatever reason, students have just decided that they’re over the idea of going to class on a Friday. “it’s kind of interesting how quickly that happened (to) where … this seems like it should be illegal.”

Teachers have also grown accustomed to their new Friday routine.

Ryker Loman, a Skyview High School math teacher, now schedules all of his out-of-work appointments for Fridays. Even when he spends a few hours on Fridays grading tests, he still feels like he has a buffer: a shorter day heading into the weekend.

Crabill appreciates the work-life balance. A family weekend trip to McCall is easier to pull off. Holiday weekends now turn into a Friday-through-Monday break, and extra time with his 2-year-old. “How do you argue with having four days with your son, rather than just two?”

But there’s a downside, and Crabill bristles at it. On some Fridays, even when students are off, teachers are required to check in and show up at school for contracted work days.

“Having the mandated multiple times a month where we have to do professional development, have to do district trainings … (that) makes it not as worth it to me.”

It’s not uncommon for four-day schools to use their fifth weekday for teacher professional development. Kirkman defends the Friday work days — and the required check-ins.

“I think that is a good use of an accountability piece to our patrons and to our taxpayers, making sure that those teachers are working … when they need to work,” he said.

The long game: Will the four-day schedule help Nampa keep teachers?

Nampa is gambling that the four-day schedule will help the district compete for teachers in a crowded job market. Nampa is hoping teachers might be willing to stick around — instead of fleeing for Boise or West Ada, districts that can offer higher pay, but operate on a five-day schedule.

Loman is weighing the pros and cons.

He and his wife both teach, and they’re planning on starting a family. The idea of a pay raise is appealing. But the long weekends are also appealing. “From my perspective, the four-day week is definitely a draw.”

The district says the early numbers suggest the new schedule is helping with retention. So far, only 15 teachers have resigned or announced plans to retire, “an encouragingly low number,” district spokesman Matthew Sizemore said. “We expect to have a clearer picture by the end of April and into May as hiring season gains momentum.”

The Nampa Education Association supported the idea of pursuing a four-day week; in 2024, 90% of survey respondents wanted the union to publicly back the move. Coffey, the NEA’s president, likes the four-day week. He’d like to see it become normalized — not just in dozens of Idaho school districts, but in the workplace in general. But he isn’t sure the schedule was a make-or-break idea for union members.

“I don’t think teachers were clamoring for it by any means. It’s just something that we looked around and were like, ‘Well, that might be kind of nice,’” he said. “I think, overall, it is.”

As always, however, there are tradeoffs.

The school days are longer. The working Fridays, said Coffey, are “generally reviled” by most teachers. And fewer school days does not translate into fewer staff meetings — just fewer windows to schedule them. “Admin love meetings,” he says. “You can’t do anything without a meeting.”

And after a year of turmoil — including but by no means limited to the four-day schedule — Sandoval is worried about who will be around to teach her kids next year. She says she has talked to teachers who aren’t sure about coming back.

“At what point can we fault our teachers for being overwhelmed?” she said. “They were dealt the same cards us parents were dealt.”

A time to research and refine

A big early test for Nampa’s four-day schedule will come this month, as students take the Idaho Standards Achievement Test. Schools don’t usually get the results until summer. But Russell will be watching closely.

But even after he gets the numbers, Russell might not have all the answers he wants. If the student growth doesn’t meet goals — or equal last year’s growth — is that a result of the new schedule? Or new school boundaries? Or any number of other changes and variables?

The move to a four-day schedule is a constant process of responding to the unexpected.

For example, says Russell, the district’s calendar committee will have to decide how to handle the weeks when school is out on Monday. Continuing to shift to Tuesday-through-Friday weeks might not make sense, if families and working high school students are accustomed to school being closed every Friday.

Russell already has other adjustments in mind.

He says the district will work more with teachers who are trying to figure out how to shoehorn their learning plans into fewer school days — and help teachers get off to a quick start early in the year.

“They do feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot to teach and to cover,” he said. “While the calendar says it’s a nine-month school year, because the ISAT test comes in April, it kind of comes to a seven-month school year.”

And Russell says he’s heard the message about the grade school bell schedule. “We probably would like to get our elementary schools out a little earlier.”

It might take time for Russell to piece together trends on test scores and student performance. While Russell believes the four-day schedule is a valuable recruiting tool, he also knows it will take a couple of years to track teacher retention and job application numbers.

Since trustees are committed to staying with the four-day schedule, school administrators will have time to research and refine.

“We’re gonna look and see what we can do to make it better for everyone,” he said. “Not always possible. But (we) definitely want to hear how we can do that.”