A four-day school week: Cutting fuel bills or cutting off our noses?

When I was a kid, my parents sent me to private schools, which meant that, not only did they pay a pretty hefty tuition bill, but they also had to pony up dough for school trips, lunches, after-school programs, textbooks, tissues, PE uniforms, and hundreds of other expenses.

My classrooms were habitually under-heated in the winter, my carpools often took me on byzantine routes across the DC area, and there were times when adult supervision was totally nonexistent. Even with all of this, I somehow managed to get a decent education: years later, I still remember how to do basic math, have a fairly good idea of how the federal government is structured, and rarely misspell the word "very." I think that this might put me a couple of notches ahead of Dubya.

Coming from this background, I'm not all that horrified by some of the cutbacks that school districts are using to deal with America's current fuel crisis/recession/inflation/stagflation hiccup. I think that some of them might even improve our schools; as a child, I found it hard to fall asleep in my chilly classrooms, which actually seemed to help my studies. Furthermore, bake sales and money drives could increase parental involvement, something that is sorely lacking in many areas.