School districts across the country, reacting to wicked high gas prices, are shifting to four-day work weeks—and in some cases asking kids to walk a little farther to catch the bus.

While the potential benefits of having kids walk a bit more are intriguing, is it really possible to cram five days of student learning into four?

No matter. The rising cost ($4 a gallon and rising) of running those big yellow diesel school buses is too much for some rural districts, like this one outside St. Paul, Minnesota, which said a month ago it would save about $65,000 by switching to a four-day week.

The full blog post at Mother Jones.