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Some rural Texas school districts are switching to four-day school weeks in an effort to recruit and retain teachers amid ongoing staff shortages. The Houston ISD, the largest district in Texas, has raised its starting salary for teachers to $61,500 for the upcoming school year. Smaller districts can't pay that kind of coin, so some of them, such as Mineral Wells, Athens, and Jasper, are offering a Monday-through-Thursday work week as an incentive. The HISD district has no plans of moving to a four-day school week.