The Jeff Davis Parish School Board intends to poll the community on the possibility of a four-day school week.

School board members began discussing a proposed four-day school week in March, but delayed any official action until a survey could be conducted to gauge the community’s response.

Now Superintendent John Hall says the board is ready to receive feedback from parents and others in the community concerning the possibility of a four-day school week.

“It won’t be long before Mr. (Paul) Trahan and myself start to develop a committee on the four-day school week,” Hall said. “I know a lot of people have been asking questions about it.”

Hall said the surveys will not be sent until after students and faculty are settled in for the new school year in August.

Input from board members will also be received before the surveys are sent out to the public, Trahan said.

“We are going to bring the questions to the board that are going to be asked on the survey prior to us sending them out,” he said.

Trahan said the surveys should give parents particular details on what a four-day school week involves and what an average day will look like for students and teachers.

“The critical part of the survey is that everything is understood in the survey of how the school day is going to be if we go that route,” Trahan said. “I think they need to know we are going to start here and end here and this is how many hours a day the kids and teachers and everybody are going to be there.”

Board member Summer Lejeune said parents should be made aware of all the options of what a school day could look like as far as length of school hours.

“At this point, I think we are just going to have to look at it as an average that school starts at 7:30 a.m. or 7:40 a.m. and on the average you are going to have to stay till 4 p.m. or 4:10 p.m., or something of that nature,” Trahan said. “We just want everybody to understand when that survey goes out that this is more than likely what it is going to take to get the four-day school week.”

Board members are still considering who will receive the surveys. Some board members have expressed interest in having grandparents and parents of future students included in the survey along with parents with students currently enrolled in school and school employees.