Saul Soto wakes up at 6 a.m. Fridays, checks the stock market and maybe makes some trades.
Then it’s breakfast and school work in his room with multiple computer monitors until noonish. After that, “maybe some down time” if he’s lucky.
By late afternoon, the Palo Verde High School senior heads to work as a cook at a Sonic Drive-In on the east side. He’ll close up about midnight and get home by 1 a.m. he says.
Because his school has formal class only four days a week, he uses Friday to work at other jobs, including his new landscaping business. Saul’s labor helps his family pay some bills, he says, adding he has two younger siblings.
“Friday has given me time to catch up,” Saul says. “During the week, I get off school, I do cross country and then I go right to work.”
Saul is one of the nearly 700 students at Palo Verde who are participating in a Tucson Unified School District four-day-week pilot program that began this school year and is the first of its kind in a traditional public school here.
As the first quarter ended in October, Arizona Luminaria caught up with Palo Verde students and staff to talk about the new schedule. The modifications include a longer school day: seven 60-minute classes from 8:10 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. Fridays are free for students and abbreviated for staff, which rotates to support students. The fifth day of the week is one for credit recovery, academic help, internships and family flexibility.
Senior Sham Alkurdi is using her Fridays this fall to meet with counselors to go over her college applications and essays. She said it has been especially helpful because Arabic is her native language.
“It is the time — because if I don’t do it on a Friday, then I wouldn’t get it done,” she said. “It’s giving me the benefit to get help and get my work done rather than just delaying it over and over and over.”
Sham and other students schedule time with counselors and teachers. Sometimes, she needs help with classwork too, as her class days are abbreviated. She transitions daily from Palo Verde to JTED’s east side campus for medical tech classes, as part of earning career and technical certification.
She aims to attend the University of Arizona next year and possibly study nursing. Her baking business and photography hobby also keep her busy, she says.
“That Friday also allows me to do a lot of work,” she said. “So I get ahead on the Fridays. But those things that I have to get done, I discipline myself until I’m done.”
The adjustment for students is gradual, Palo Verde principal Eric Brock says. Now in his 14th year as principal at the school from which he graduated in the 1990s, Brock helped sell the four-day week plan to TUSD’s Governing Board last spring as a way to grow the district with a new idea.
Among TUSD’s 10 largest high schools, Palo Verde has seen the most growth — at 11% — over the last four years, according to Arizona Department of Education data.
A Palo Verde parent survey last spring showed about one third of parents indicated their student would come in on a Friday.
“Over half our kids have come in already,” Brock said. “So that part is working.”
Growth is needed in TUSD, which plans to close schools due to lower enrollment and has lost around 13,000 students in the last 12 years. It now has about 35,000 in 88 schools, Arizona Department of Education data says. And more students means more state funding: If Palo Verde’s attendance improves just 10% next fiscal year, that’s $143,000 in additional state aid, the data says.
Documenting the academic progress comes in 2027, Brock said. When he goes back to the board next semester, he should have more numbers to share. Yet, Palo Verde earned a B Grade from the State Board of Education this month.
Four things to know about how things are shaking out this semester, one quarter into the new four-day week plan:
- Students schedule with teachers for Friday help on an app, which tracks the data: “What it looks like when they get here is that out of our 691 kids, we have 384, which I think my math is about 55% have come in for at least one Friday. And then we keep live numbers so I know how many people are here,” Brock said. “So last Friday, we had 147 kids come in. And they went to 242 sessions. And then I can track how many students went into each class, how long they were there for. I can actually track the kids that are coming in, which teachers they saw. And for how long they were there.”
- Even five minutes is an adjustment: “It’s only five minutes,” Sham said, but the longer class time adds up and people are still adapting. “There are 60-minute classes and it took a minute to get used to. But it’s only five minutes per class over there,” Brock said. “So 35 minutes over the course of the week. That’s more minutes than last year, so at the end of the day, people are tired. That’s everybody — teachers, students everybody.”
- Attendance is creeping up: Attendance was in the low 80s last year and this year it’s at 85%, Brock says. “So, a little better than the overall average in the last few years but I need that to be a little bit more.” Attendance has not gone up like he thought, initially. And as it moves, he said, achievement will follow. “You can’t learn if you’re not here, right? Our kids for three years make huge growth, more than three years of progress when they’re here with us,” he said. “We have great teachers but you can’t learn if you’re not here. And I think if we can make an impact there then you’ll see the overall school’s grade goes up.”
- Time could lead to academic achievement: “The only comparable data point that I have right now is last year’s benchmarking to this year’s,” Brock said. “What we see is that this year’s student class is lower than last. If I had to quantify our letter grade, we’d have an A+ in growth and a D in achievement. Our kids are coming really low, but when they spend three years with us, they’re growing off the chart. They’re making more than three years’ progress.”
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