After a failed 5-2 motion to approve a calendar with 445 daily instructional minutes, trustees approved the 435 minute calendar in a 5-2 vote at the Feb. 10 board meeting. The approved calendar will set the standard for instructional time in subsequents years, district officials said.
The details
The approved calendar includes 435 daily instructional minutes and 175 school days. In this option, students will start school Aug. 12 and end May 22, 2026. It will also have three staff work days, a four-day weekend for students in October and a three-day weekend in February.
There is no school Nov. 4, and Dec. 19 and March 13, 2026 are early release days.
Important dates for the 2025-26 calendar include:
- District holidays: Sept. 1, Oct. 13, Jan. 19, 2026 and April 3, 2026
- Professional Development Day and teacher work days/student holidays: Oct. 10, Jan. 5, 2026 and Feb. 16, 2026
- Thanksgiving break: Nov. 24-28
- Winter break: Dec. 22-Jan. 5, 2026
- Spring break: March 16-20, 2026
- Bad weather day: April 6, 2026
Chief of Staff Shawna Miller presented the board with two calendar options at the Jan. 7 workshop: one with 435 daily instructional minutes and one with 445 minutes. If the district had adopted the second option, it could have meant fewer school days for students, Miller said.
LISD officials sent emails to staff and parents Jan. 16 for their input, Miller said. Recipients had until Jan. 27 to respond. Out of the 5,000 respondents, around 60% preferred the 445 minute calendar and 40% preferred the 435 minute calendar, Miller said.
Zooming in
The state requires all school districts to have at least 75,600 minutes of instruction each year. Extending the daily instruction time to 445 minutes would have allowed the district to meet this requirement with three fewer school days, which would have been used as teacher work days and a bad weather day, according to district documents.
However, several trustees expressed concern with fewer instructional days. Extending the instructional day by 10 minutes will not translate to realized instructional time, trustee Buddy Bonner said. When parceled out across seven periods, the time is negligible and would not offset the loss in three school days.
The district had planned to use the three lost instructional days as planning days for staff members, which was their number one request during development of the calendar, Miller said.
