SAN ANGELO, Texas — The Texas Leadership Public Schools recently announced a 4.5 day school week as part of the 2023-2024 educational year.
This new initiative is part of the "School Innovation" focus and was determined after receiving feedback last year from Texas educators and parents through various surveys.
Impacted schools will now close at 12:45 p.m. Friday afternoons.
"Fridays will still be an academic day so all the cores will still be hit on Friday morning, get the education in," Texas Leadership founder and CEO Walt Landers said.
A new "Focus Fridays" plan will also be put into place to help parents by offering a program where staff members can watch children until the end of the afternoon.
During this plan, lunches and transportation will also be provided.
For Landers, one of the most important parts of the program is to better the lives of West Texas teachers.
"That's a real main focus for this 4.5 day so teachers can have off," he said. "If they wanna go take off campus they can or what we've heard from a lot of teachers is they will take advantage of that half day and do a lot of their grading, their lesson plans, all the things they need to do..."
The district plans to continue strengthening the Kindergarten-12th grade Advanced Academics program which first began in the 2022-2023 school year.
They will also incorporate STEM programs, Civil Air Patrol, and FAA certified airplane building called Tango Flight.
"Our why is straightforward," Landers said. "We want to meet the needs of our teachers, right where they are. We want to provide them with a better work-life balance, reduce stress and burnout, improve family-time, and give them the chance to ‘sharpen the saw’ as we say around here. It’s a leadership-principle to add in rest and factor in mental well-being."
Go to texasleadership.net for more information.