Pearsall schools will resume 5-day week

By Manuel Azocar III - Sports Writer/Managing Editor | June 25, 2025

Short schedule lasted only one year

Pearsall ISD trustees voted unanimously on Wednesday, June 18, to return schedules to a traditional five-day school week following input from campus administrators.
The change represents a reversal of school scheduling policy only a year after a four-day week was initiated at PISD. The abbreviated schedule used during the 2024-25 academic year included longer school days from Monday to Thursday.
Among several reasons proposed for the shortened week last year was an apparent need to make Pearsall attractive to teacher applicants traveling to work from other cities, or to make relocating to Pearsall a viable option for applicants. The school district indicated last year that it believed teachers working shorter weeks would be more likely to remain in the district than those working five-day weeks.
Administrators indicated in their support of the reversal that they had heard reports of student fatigue due to the longer school days and noted an apparent lack of effect on teacher retention because of the move to a four-day week.

The new calendar cuts school days down from eight hours and 15 minutes in Pre-K through 12th grade to seven hours and 30 minutes, and will run August 5 to May 22 with a one-week break October 6-10.
“We looked at a whole bunch of factors and the calendar, and we asked principals to have the biggest say in this because they’re the ones who work with the teachers and the kids the most,” PISD Superintendent Dr. Jody Spoor said.
“So looking at this new calendar, there is a 35-percent decrease in the number of minutes for this coming school year, so this was intentionally done,” PISD Human Resources Director Michelle DeLeon said. “Based on feedback from the district, students were fatigued at the end of the day and did not want to take in more information.
“Curriculum will be distributed more evenly, reduce burnout and content retention,” DeLeon added.
School officials also noted that the teacher turnover rate went from 20.1 percent to 20.3 percent, indicating that the four-day week had no effect on teacher retention.
“One thing, especially at the high school, that we needed was alignment with our higher education agency, which in this case is South Texas College, because of our dual credit students, so the spring breaks are aligned,” Pearsall High School Principal Melissa Bass said.
School officials are also looking at creating a calendar committee to help with input on the district calendar every year.
“The plan is to have representation from each of the campuses, from some of the central office folks, students and parents on it as well, and in the creation, so that when we’re bringing you options, they’re options that you had an opportunity to help create,” Dr. Spoor said of the committee. “So the choice isn’t ‘I pick A, B, or C,’ but ‘I had some opportunity to help with the creation of it’.
“We need to get some data to inform us where our high absence days are and then get the feedback from parents of ‘this is too early for us to start, we’d like to start later,’” the superintendent said. “We also need to look at transportation. Do we need to stagger routes a little bit better for this?”
Ultimately, according to Dr. Spoor, one of the primary factors in the decision was the addition of instructional days ahead of testing.
“When we looked at this, we needed more instruction days in front of the testing and that was going to determine if the kids were going to be successful or not,” she said. “We do believe this will give us a good shot at that. It’s not an ideal calendar, but it is what we think will serve us well.
“I’ve asked everyone to start thinking now of what you want in that calendar for next year and then we’ll talk about wants and needs and we’ll come up with some great choices and the board will have that decision earlier so that we’re not doing this so late in the year,” the superintendent said. “We’re trying to make it work for everybody but we know we’re not going to make everybody happy, but we hope that we’ve got something here that’s going to serve us well.”