“I get that there’s a lot of teacher openings in Montana and they’re having trouble filling them. “You tell me I can do that working four days a week instead of five days a week and I can have an extra day to relax, unwind, or prep, or do any of the thousand things I need to do that I never get done? I’m going to take it. I’m making like 30-something-thousand-dollars a year no matter where I go,” Durand said. Within a few hours after submitting his first application he received two emails and a phone call.īefore applying to districts in Montana, Durand had never heard of four-day school weeks, but it wound up being a deciding factor in where he wanted to work. He kept getting beat out for positions by college professors driven out of their colleges due to budget cuts, he said, so he expanded his search and on a whim applied for a job in Montana.
( This story, the first of two parts, was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.)Īndrew Durand left his home state of New York and moved more than 2,000 miles for a job as a music teacher in Stanford, Montana, after applying for more than 150 jobs throughout the northeastern United States.
