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Parents, families and school staff can plan now that an Ely school calendar has been approved for the 2025-26 school year.
School board members voted 5-0 Monday, with Rochelle Sjoberg absent, to approve a calendar that was presented by district administrators after consultation with school staff.
The calendar includes 172 student attendance days, the same amount scheduled this year.
In many ways, the calendar is similar to this year’s, with long weekends in February, March and April.
That was a source of debate as school administrators surveyed staff on two potential calendars - one with the long weekends and the other with a longer break over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
“We had one (option) with the two weeks during Christmas break (but) the option with the breaks throughout the spring was the most popular,” said superintendent Anne Oelke.
Board member Tony Colarich had questions about the calendar during the brief board session and asked how staff weighed in.
Oelke noted that the calendar recommended by the administration and approved on Monday was favored by 60 percent of those who responded to the survey.
Other restrictions when choosing a calendar relate to the district’s labor contracts.
“There are identified dates in our contract that we must have off because of our contracts with teachers and the AFSCME contract,” said Oelke. “We can’t have school without our secretaries, our paraprofessionals or our kitchen staff.”
The first day of school is, as usual, the Tuesday after Labor Day with students in grades 1-12 set to report to class on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Kindergarten students begin later in the week on Sept. 5.
At the end of the school year, students will remain in school after Memorial Day through the end of that week, with the last day of school slated for Thursday, May 28 and graduation to take place on Friday, May 29.
The longest break in the 2025-26 calendar covers the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, with a break beginning on Wednesday, Dec. 24, and continuing until classes resume on Monday, Jan. 5.
The prospective calendar that failed to get the most votes would have granted a full two weeks, with students and staff getting both the weeks of Dec. 22 and Dec. 29 off from school.
Students will get three, four-day weekends in the latter part of the school year as well with students off Feb. 13-16, March 13-16, and April 3-6.
At times during the last two decades, school officials have included a weeklong break during the spring, in part to accommodate families who were planning vacations. More recently, the district has opted for a series of shorter breaks.
“The feedback is always we don’t want to go too far in June and we want a spring break, but we can’t make all of it work,” said Oelke. “So we put two of these calendars out there and kind of go with the majority. It’s good to put this out here as our staff sees things we don’t see. We moved our conference dates (from November as a result of staff surveys) so it’s good to ask.”
The 2025-26 calendar includes the four-day “MEA” weekend Oct. 16-19 and five days off over Thanksgiving.
A teacher workshop day that coincided with deer hunting season is not part of the 2024-25 calendar, but students will have Monday, Jan. 19, which is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as a day off from school.
