Montana schools address teacher shortage by adopting four-day weeks to better recruit and retain educators

(This story, the first of two parts, was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.) Andrew 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.  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. Within a few hours after submitting his first application he