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State committee advances rule to standardize 4-day school week waivers after presentation and public comment
Summary
After public comment from a rural superintendent and a staff presentation summarizing national research, the Law and Licensing Committee amended and approved draft rule R277-121 to formalize a two-meeting waiver process and forwarded the rule to the full board on first reading.
Superintendent Bruce Northcott of Daggett School District told the Law and Licensing Committee that his small, rural district has run a four-day school week for 11 years and supports formalizing a waiver process.
“Yes. I am Bruce Northcott, superintendent of Daggett School District,” Northcott said. “We think that this is a really good thing for our community.”
The committee then heard a staff research briefing from Ashley Lehi, who summarized multi-state studies and local survey results about four-day school weeks. Lehi said nationwide adoption has grown rapidly and that recent aggregated research found mixed effects on achievement, with some statistically significant reading declines and mitigation linked to daily instructional hours.
“This study in 2024 aggregated the results of all seven studies,” Ashley Lehi said, “and they also did some new research on student achievement within the school year.”
Lehi told the committee that Utah districts using four-day waivers are overwhelmingly rural and that a small local survey of Utah leaders on four-day schedules returned largely positive reports on attendance, teacher recruitment and local satisfaction. She said one practical deadline tied to processing waivers is April 10.
The staff proposal before the committee, draft rule R277-121, incorporates elements of House Bill 181 from the 2025 legislative session and codifies a required public-notice process around LEA waiver requests. The draft requires two public meetings — one before a local board votes to apply for a waiver and one after the local board’s vote to explain next steps — and sets an April 10 application deadline “which according to AAG Beale would give her enough time to process all the waivers.”
Committee members debated whether the second, post‑vote meeting is necessary or whether electronic notice or other forms of communication would satisfy the policy’s intent to increase public understanding. Staff and the committee clarified that the rule does not change the existing requirement that LEAs publish their local calendars at their own discretion; Aaron Bridal, director of data and statistics, said calendar publication is a local decision.
The committee approved a technical amendment to move certain eligibility restrictions (lines 54–64 of the draft) earlier in the rule so they appear as preconditions to filing a waiver request. After that amendment, the committee approved draft R277-121 as amended on first reading and voted to forward it to the full board for second and final reading.
The motions recorded in the committee minutes passed unanimously. The transcript did not list a formal roll-call tally of individual votes.
The committee discussion also asked staff to provide additional enumeration of how many schools and districts the waivers would affect and to confirm distinctions between urban and rural classifications used in cited research. Staff noted some information is compiled in May and that some follow-up detail may be provided to the full board.
