Liberty Hill ISD is asking students to return to school on six additional Fridays that were not previously included in this school year’s calendar.
The big picture
In early January, the Texas Education Agency denied a waiver that would’ve allowed LHISD to dedicate required instructional minutes to professional development for staff. Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, the agency is no longer approving staff development waivers for districts with a four-day-school-week calendar, according to TEA information.
What parents need to know
LHISD students must attend school Jan. 30 and Feb. 6 to make up for bad weather days in which school was cancelled Jan. 26 and 27 due to severe winter weather. If students did not make up the two missed days of school, the district’s calendar would be short on state-mandated operational minutes, according to a letter sent to parents Jan. 25.
Additionally, the district announced it will require students to attend school on four more Fridays in March and May that were not scheduled in the current academic calendar, including:
- March 6
- March 27
- May 8
- May 15
The current 2025-26 calendar assumed the district would receive state approval for a waiver to allocate 2,100 minutes of required instructional time for students toward professional development for staff.
LHISD officials initially submitted the waiver application to the TEA on Dec. 16 and resubmitted it Jan. 9 after the agency requested more information. On Jan. 9, the TEA denied LHISD’s staff development waiver request, according to LHISD information.
How we got here
The TEA’s updated policy states that “four-day-school-week [districts or charter schools] are not eligible to receive a staff development waiver.” This change, effective in the 2025-26 school year, was detailed in a 2024-25 TEA handbook released in September 2024.
This school year, the district adopted a hybrid calendar featuring a mix of traditional five-day school weeks as well as four-day school weeks in which students do not go to class on Fridays. The new schedule was intended to provide planning and professional development time on Fridays for teachers impacted by multiple years of budget cuts, including staff reductions and larger class sizes, district officials said.
"How can we continue to ask our staff to take more on and more on ... and not provide them time to do it?" interim Superintendent Travis Motal said in an interview with Community Impact this fall. "We know it's not ideal, but if we want the same high-quality expectation that we have in the classroom, we have to be able to give our teachers time in order to be ready for that."
LHISD officials believed the district would still qualify for the TEA waiver as in years past “as LHISD staff works five days per week operationally,” according to the district’s website. The district’s website states that the TEA has not provided a clear definition of what it considers to be a four-day-school-week calendar.
The TEA has not responded to Community Impact’s request to define how it classifies “four-day-school-week" districts. According to the TEA’s handbook, “the waiver minutes are only applicable to staff development provided instead of student instruction during the school year.”
On Jan. 27, the district posted a webpage with answers to frequently asked questions about the calendar changes.
“The responsibility does not fall on the state,” the district’s website states. “The responsibility falls onto LHISD.”
Going forward
The district is forming a calendar advisory committee of parents and staff to help develop a calendar for next school year. Interested community members may sign up through an online form through Jan. 30. The committee will meet from 5-8 p.m. Feb. 11.
In a survey shared at a Dec. 15 board meeting, 54.2% of parents and 72.5% of staff said they favored an innovative calendar with a majority of four-day school weeks for students. The district would like to review students' middle-of-year performance data to determine the hybrid calendar's effect on student learning, Motal sad Dec. 15.
