By Atirikta Kumar, The Texas Tribune

As a small rural district with a small budget, Woodson Independent School District struggled to compete for teachers with its larger urban peers in North Texas.

“Better the teacher, the better the student’s outcomes. And so we knew if we wanted to improve education for our school district, we had to be able to attract and retain really good staff,” Superintendent Casey Adams said. “And, I knew I couldn’t pay more.”

So six years ago, school leaders made a change that is becoming increasingly common among districts in similar situations: They shrank the school week from five to four days.

In the 2019-20 school year, Woodson ISD was one of eight school districts in Texas that had adopted the four-day school week model. In the last two school years, tha

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