The single-school district is one of the 97 of Oklahoma's 513 districts that have made the switch to the four-day week in recent years, citing struggles to cut their budgets and recruit high-quality teachers amid a nationwide teacher shortage and pay crisis that has had a particularly devastating effect on schools in the Sooner State.
"There are lots of challenges and problems that people haven’t tried to fix," Bob Gragg, the superintendent, told NBC News. “But just because we've been doing it one way for a long time doesn't mean we necessarily need to keep doing it that way.”...