NAMPA, Idaho — Nampa School District is transitioning to four-day school weeks for the 2024-25 school year. I discussed changes and opportunities for the Nampa Police Department and Treasure Valley YMCA.
- The Nampa Police Department expects to see better staffing for resource officers with a four-day school week.
- The YMCA currently has programming at Central, Endeavor, and Sherman Elementary Schools.
- The first goal is to expand programming at one of those schools and then create additional programming at more schools as funds are procured.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"Parents, you know, being one myself, we're such great procrastinators and so we think 'we'll worry about that next year', and so I think that when it's really going to hit people is when they start enrolling in school and those Fridays come around," said Treasure Valley YMCA President and CEO David Duro.
Fridays — days that could be, and maybe should be, top of mind for some Nampa School District parents. The school district has seen major decisions affecting students and parents for next school year and I've been following along the whole way. Next year students will have nearly all Fridays off, possibly the largest and most impactful to working parents.
"Some people are thinking, 'oh I'm going to figure something out by then' and some people are just going 'What am I going to do? How am I going to make sure I make enough to pay my rent and feed my family?' so it's a hard decision that way," Duro continued.
Nearly all of the parents I've talked to have expressed concern over Fridays. Some I've talked with are more concerned about the safety of teens and tweens when parents are possibly off to work. So I caught up with some school resource officers with the Nampa Police Department at Ridgevue High where they were doing some summertime training.
"There wasn't a lot of concerns," says SRO Divison Supervisor Cpl. James Williams. "We feel like we can actually staff the schools better with a four-day week because we're splitting up our staffing to accommodate the five-day week."
The YMCA currently has programming at Central, Endeavor, and Sherman Elementaries. When it comes to selecting which location to begin expanding resources at first, the Y tells me that they will learn from parents and allies to find where the greatest need is.
"With the existing resources we have, we'll be expanding one of them and at least parents and families will have availabilities at that one site and then, if we can somehow find more resources, we can do more expansion but we want to be there at least for the one," Duro said.
"At this point does the Y feel prepared for additional students on Fridays?" I asked.
"Right now, we're prepared to take the one site and expand that to Fridays of the three that we've got going," Duro said. "We just haven't gotten the resources to do the expansion."
