Tucson's Palo Verde High to transition to four-day week

Palo Verde students in the fall will transition to attending school from 8:10 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays instead of the traditional five-day schedule. The school will be open on Fridays for students to get tutoring from teachers and to participate in food service.

At Tuesday’s TUSD board meeting, students, teachers, and parents were optimistic about the change.

“Our teachers feel so strongly about this policy not only for our own lesson preparation needs and work-life balance, but also because we believe that this pilot is a benefit to our students and their lives,” Palo Verde teacher Brenda Camping told the board. “There are so many situations in which Fridays are dedicated to catching up, or sometimes even just a little bit more time to relax and be with their families, which would change these kids’ lives for the better.”

Tucson is the latest district to consider adopting a four-day class schedule, a change several districts statewide began during the pandemic. Several of those districts, including Casa Grande Elementary School District, made the move permanent with the 2023-24 school year.

Liberty and Cartwright elementary school districts were the largest in the Phoenix area to adopt the four-day school week, but Cartwright in Phoenix’s west valley announced in January that it would return to the traditional five-day week beginning in the fall.

Cartwright District Executive Director of Public Relations Victor Hugo Rodriguez said the district made the decision after seeing state test scores decline. According to state documents, the district saw significant test score declines in all major subjects, including language arts, math and reading.

“We realized that a traditional week would be better for our students because they would be able to spend more time with their teachers, more time learning, and this would be better for them when they transition to high school,” Rodriguez said.

The Cartwright District, which serves students from preschool through eighth grade, had 13,375 students enrolled in the 2024-25 school year, with 19% of students achieving English language proficiency. That was a drop from the 23% proficiency in 2018-19 when district enrollment was 16,035.

The district’s math proficiency also declined, from 21% in 2018-19 to 19% in 2024-25, according to Arizona School Report Cards.

The Tucson board said test scores and attendance are the driving reasons it voted to approve the Palo Verde pilot program.

Palo Verde Principal Eric Brock told the board that test scores will be among the criteria he will consider to determine if the four-day schedule is successful.