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Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on

by TimPC 4y ago

Ultimately though we need to pick an arrangement. It's going to be very difficult to have part of society on reduced five day work weeks and part of society on four day work weeks. It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. It's hard for the schools or daycares if the teachers/ECEs opt for four day work weeks but a substantial portion of their market requires five day services. The push for a four day work week is inclusive and allows most people to shift to a four day work week. The push to people working in accordance with their optimal work patterns unfairly targets the service sector and restricts how their choice in how they work based on demands for their services.

Cerium 4y ago
A substantial portion of the service sector runs with a seven day schedule, we don't push schools to offer seven day service in response? Perhaps having more mixed working arrangements will improve societal flexibility and better serve all people.
- TimPC 4y ago
  I think it's a legitimate problem though that schools and daycares operate predominantly on a five day schedule now that works for a large number of workers. If we go to a model where we have something resembling a 50/50 split between longer 4-day work weeks and shorter 5-day work weeks we end up with a huge problem in how to schedule services so that they work for the majority of people. There will be overwhelming pressure on schools to have days that match the shorter length of day in the five-day workweek so that parents who opt for five days can spend time with their kids. There will be overwhelming pressure to have four slightly longer school days so that parents who opt for the four-day work week can spend time with the kids on the three days off. It's very difficult for schools to opt for both solutions as it would require doubling the number of class types being offered which makes it harder for smaller schools to have sufficient students in every class to be financially viable. Even if we solve financial viability schools would need the ability to tell teachers which schedule they had to take rather than letting the teachers freely choose. I can't stress how much this choice of working approach would be bad for the school system.
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    I can't help but feel that you are arguing that it would be hard on everyone if the current standard was not maintained, while ignoring that the current standard is not maintained. Here are occupations that generally don't have a M-F 9-5 work cycle right now: police, firefighters, the vast majority of people who work in healthcare including nurses and doctors, restaurants, hospitality, janitorial, retail sales, plumbers, HVAC techs, construction workers, taxi/lyft/uber/whatever drivers, truck drivers, and customer service.
    - TimPC 4y ago
      I actually prefer a four day school week and four day work week as a standard I just don’t think it’s easy to have multiple simultaneous standards. I get that not all jobs are M-F 9-5 workloads. But I also know a number of people report substantial hardships of not having that schedule in those jobs. I don’t think we want to make school no longer correspond to the default work week by having two default work weeks unless we want all people on the wrong default to add those problems to their jobs.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. Schools can run a 5-day pattern even if some of their employees are on a 4-day pattern (as long as they are not the same four-day pattern). In fact, it's not unknown for various workplaces to run a 5-day every week pattern with employees on a mix of 9-8-80 two-week and 4-10-40 1-week cycles with different cycle days off. Faculty (especially in pre-K through primary grades; scheduling can be more creative without disruption at the secondary level) probably need to be on every open day, generally, but other than that,..
- TimPC 4y ago
  It's difficult and disruptive for students to be on a 5-day pattern of education with a homeroom teacher on a 4-day pattern. This basically necessitates scheduling entirely non-core subjects on the fifth day, potentially even resulting in multiple sessions of gym in a single day. It's also not clear to me you can viably do this without increasing costs unless the school is free to choose which of the four days the teacher's work instead of the teacher doing so. For example, if the standard 4-day work week is Monday-Thursday then there is ridiculous demand for non-core subject teachers on Friday and those non-core subject teachers may even be working Monday-Thursday themselves resulting in reduced supply.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > It's difficult and disruptive for students to be on a 5-day pattern of education with a homeroom teacher on a 4-day pattern. Is it? In most secondary environments I’ve seen “homeroom”, if it exists at all (which tends to only be early secondary, like middle school, and not consistently even there), is simply a regular class to which added time for administrivia like daily announcements is added.

by TimPC 4y ago

Cerium 4y ago

A substantial portion of the service sector runs with a seven day schedule, we don't push schools to offer seven day service in response? Perhaps having more mixed working arrangements will improve societal flexibility and better serve all people.

TimPC 4y ago
I think it's a legitimate problem though that schools and daycares operate predominantly on a five day schedule now that works for a large number of workers. If we go to a model where we have something resembling a 50/50 split between longer 4-day work weeks and shorter 5-day work weeks we end up with a huge problem in how to schedule services so that they work for the majority of people. There will be overwhelming pressure on schools to have days that match the shorter length of day in the five-day workweek so that parents who opt for five days can spend time with their kids. There will be overwhelming pressure to have four slightly longer school days so that parents who opt for the four-day work week can spend time with the kids on the three days off. It's very difficult for schools to opt for both solutions as it would require doubling the number of class types being offered which makes it harder for smaller schools to have sufficient students in every class to be financially viable. Even if we solve financial viability schools would need the ability to tell teachers which schedule they had to take rather than letting the teachers freely choose. I can't stress how much this choice of working approach would be bad for the school system.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  I can't help but feel that you are arguing that it would be hard on everyone if the current standard was not maintained, while ignoring that the current standard is not maintained. Here are occupations that generally don't have a M-F 9-5 work cycle right now: police, firefighters, the vast majority of people who work in healthcare including nurses and doctors, restaurants, hospitality, janitorial, retail sales, plumbers, HVAC techs, construction workers, taxi/lyft/uber/whatever drivers, truck drivers, and customer service.
  - TimPC 4y ago
    I actually prefer a four day school week and four day work week as a standard I just don’t think it’s easy to have multiple simultaneous standards. I get that not all jobs are M-F 9-5 workloads. But I also know a number of people report substantial hardships of not having that schedule in those jobs. I don’t think we want to make school no longer correspond to the default work week by having two default work weeks unless we want all people on the wrong default to add those problems to their jobs.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> It creates unusual demand patterns on schools and daycare which you need to decide whether to run on a four or five day pattern. Schools can run a 5-day pattern even if some of their employees are on a 4-day pattern (as long as they are not the same four-day pattern). In fact, it's not unknown for various workplaces to run a 5-day every week pattern with employees on a mix of 9-8-80 two-week and 4-10-40 1-week cycles with different cycle days off. Faculty (especially in pre-K through primary grades; scheduling can be more creative without disruption at the secondary level) probably need to be on every open day, generally, but other than that,..

TimPC 4y ago
It's difficult and disruptive for students to be on a 5-day pattern of education with a homeroom teacher on a 4-day pattern. This basically necessitates scheduling entirely non-core subjects on the fifth day, potentially even resulting in multiple sessions of gym in a single day. It's also not clear to me you can viably do this without increasing costs unless the school is free to choose which of the four days the teacher's work instead of the teacher doing so. For example, if the standard 4-day work week is Monday-Thursday then there is ridiculous demand for non-core subject teachers on Friday and those non-core subject teachers may even be working Monday-Thursday themselves resulting in reduced supply.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > It's difficult and disruptive for students to be on a 5-day pattern of education with a homeroom teacher on a 4-day pattern. Is it? In most secondary environments I’ve seen “homeroom”, if it exists at all (which tends to only be early secondary, like middle school, and not consistently even there), is simply a regular class to which added time for administrivia like daily announcements is added.