That’s a bit of a tough one–are the desks easily moved by the kids? If so, although it takes a bit of time, they could be moved facing forward for that handwriting time, and back into sets of four when that time is over. (Used tennis balls slit to fit over chair and desk legs cut way down on noise.)
Another idea is to look for “moveable” seating ideas that can be used besides desks. Many of our teachers use laundry baskets for the kids to sit in during read to self or baskets next to each other for read to self time. They can be turned upside down and used as a fairly smooth surface for WW or writing in a journal. Nothing like carpet squares that can be stacked out of the way when not in use :). Maybe even under the desks for spaces, if your kids can handle that. I’m sure others have some great ideas to share!!

My school also uses Spalding, and I have always had the desks paired up facing forward. It’s just too time consuming for us to move the desks around. I look forward to reading other opinions on this matter . . . it does take up a lot of space doing it this way.

I was hoping to get rid of desks and replace with inviting tables, chairs, and carpet. My question is for those of you that have done this, where do students go when they first get to school? Do you allow them to sit anywhere? We have a few minutes of downtime before announcements and pledge. I’m not sure what to tell kids where to to go when
there is transition time/downtime. Thanks for any responses and advice!

Any downtime that we have, our students know to grab their book boxes to get in a few extra minutes of reading. This seems like it might work for your situation.
We also use this idea when we going places that we know we’ll have “wait-time”, like class picture time :).