When Utah is battling the U.S. Department of Education, such districts are trotted out as examples of how rigid federal laws that don't take into account their schools' special challenges can unfairly hurt rural children.

The Utah Board of Education should remember why it is important to consider those unique challenges as it debates a request from Rich District Superintendent Dale Lamborn to switch the district's four public schools to a four-day week.

Inflexible rules that don't bend to accommodate unusual circumstances can be harmful, whether they originate in Salt Lake City or Washington, D.C.

Lamborn presents a good case for allowing the 416 students in his district to attend classes for four longer days each week instead of five days of normal length. Many of those students spend an hour or more each day riding a bus to and from school. When the district's high school in Randolph competes in extracurricular activities with other schools, travel time is two-and-a-half to four-and-a-half hours - one way.

Lamborn must get the Utah High School Activities Association to go along with scheduling extracurricular activities for Rich students on Thursday night, Friday and Saturday and convince the state school board to give its OK. Then, Rich students would be able to spend four days with one extra hour each day in class instead of the current four regular days and one day - Friday - when many students and teachers who serve as coaches have to cut classes short or miss them altogether to compete in athletics and other activities at schools that are many miles away.

State law says Utah public-school students must spend 183 days per year in school. But it seems to us that the seat-time requirement could be satisfied, as Lamborn suggests, by fewer, but longer, days. In Rich's case, there is a real potential for those longer days to be more productive for students than five shorter days, with many unavoidable interruptions.

The four-day week seems to us to be a sensible, and flexible, way to address this rural district's unique challenges, in contrast to Washington's Draconian approach, which Utah has roundly, and rightly, criticized.