As a teacher, I would love to have my students take an extra day off each week. Who cares if I get less time to teach the kids? A 20% decrease in the time I spend with them probably wouldn't lead to a decrease in how much they learn, so what the hell? In fact, they will probably spend that time productively, despite being unsupervised while their parents are at work. Perhaps they will go to the library to investigate subjets that are not offered in the school, like Latin or oceanography.

I wonder if anyone is planning on seeing what other effects this has in the areas affected. No doubt having so many kids without supervision will lead to increased petty crimes, etc.

I wonder how folks would react if the government said that prisons would begin working on a 6 day instead of 7 day week and releasing prisoners for one day back into the populace.

Wulf...I think in a huge majority of the cases...the students who were let out of school won't spend that time learning.

I was the freaking valedictorian of my high school, and if they gave me a full day off every week, for almost my entire public school career, i'd have spent it playing baseball or something like that.

Apologies, Balta. I was being sarcastic. In fact, I would be very worried about what Stephen mentioned. Studies have shown that a very large percentage of petty crime, recreational drug use, and sex among teens occur between the time they get out of school and the time parents get home. If a school runs 8:00-2:30 (mine did) then you have a good 3 hours or more on your own to do whatever you want, and most teens make a few stupid decisions over the years (I did). This is part of the reason why the district where I teach runs 8:45-3:45. It really cuts back on those unsupervised afternoons.

If you go 5 days a week, that is.

The sign right after "Education Pays" is "Drive Safe, Kentucky." A small grammatical error that, as a Hoosier, I've always enjoyed.

When my hurricane response team stopped for breakfast somewhere in West Virginia, there was a large, internally-lit sign on a 30-foot pole across the road which read "LAUNDRAMAT." I guess there's a lot of drama when West Virginians clean their clothes.