Marietta Public Schools has released it’s calendar for the 2025-26 school year.
“Through collaboration using parent and staff surveys, our calendar committee
developed a hybrid-type calendar to not only meet the state requirements of 165
instructional days and 1,080 hours, but also allow for as many four-day weeks as
possible without sacrificing instructional time,” said district Superintendent Brandi
Naylor.
With Thackerville having moved to a four-day week and Turner using a hybrid calendar
that has several four-day weeks, the school calendar had become something of an
issue for Marietta, who had discovered – as have many larger districts – that when
smaller districts nearby change their calendar, some parents campaign for the four-day
week, and sometimes teacher retention becomes a concern.
The district was able to adopt a calendar that contains 30 weeks that are scheduled to
be four-day school weeks for students. Some of those weeks are scheduled around
holidays, but others use Professional Learning Community days which will require that
teachers be working while students are at home. Some are snow days.
The calendar still contains the usual week off at Thanksgiving, a two-week Christmas
Break, and a week for Spring Break, along with Labor Day holiday, Martin Luther King,
Jr. Day, and Good Friday, as well as a day off on the Monday after Easter.
After some orientation and staff development in early August, the first day of school for
students will be August 7, and the last day of school for students will be May 21, 2026.
“Notable changes are that this calendar will not have any banked time for snow days or
other emergencies, so virtual learning would be utilized on those days as needed,”
explained Naylor. “Additionally, we moved a parent/teacher conference that has typically
been schedule in October to September due to changes in the Strong Readers Act law.
“And one last thing that we’re really looking forward to is that we’ve added three PLC
days to allow our teachers to have full days of collaboration and work without any other
professional development being scheduled.”
The calendar was approved by the Board of Education at the March 3 regular meeting.