Molly May, assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction and assessment, presented the board of trustees with the revisions discussed by the District Leadership Team during the April 22 board meeting.
What's changed
Per the approved revision, two additional early release days and one additional full day off will be added to the student calendar each semester next school year:
- Sept. 17, early release
- Nov. 10, full day off
- Dec. 10, early release
- Jan. 28, early release
- Feb. 25, early release
- April 27, full day off
However, the two full days off fall on a Monday and the four early release days fall on a Wednesday.
"I don't love half-days as a working parent, especially when you have little kids it's really tough, but I understand what's best for the educators and we need to make sure that we're giving them planning periods," trustee Heather Sheffield said.
May also said EISD will submit a waiver to the state to receive an additional 2,100 minutes that can be devoted to professional learning. However, because of EISD's school day length, the district has additional minutes available.
"We have also built into the calendar some inclement weather days, so if we have inclement weather we don't necessarily need to make that up either," May said. "We spent a lot of time making sure we meet the state requirement for all of our instructional minutes, even being able to add these additional days."
Some context
The board approved the academic calendars for 2025-26 and 2026-27 in December.
However, the recommended revisions to the 2025-26 calendar allows for additional professional development time for teachers, May said.
"Some of this was in direct relation to us needing to take away the [Professional Learning Community] period for the core classes at the secondary level, and also realizing that the elementary schools didn't have that to begin with," May said.
The board voted to eliminate PLC periods for sixth through 12th grade English, math, science and social studies teachers in January as a cost-saving measure amid a projected budget shortfall of millions of dollars next year.
