Fulton County Schools plans its instructional calendars two years in advance, but the Board of Education wanted to make changes to next year’s calendar before working on the 2025-26 version.
The FCS Board asked Superintendent Mike Looney to shift spring break in the 2024-25 school year to the week of April 7-11, 2025. They also asked him to shift the first workday of 2025 to Jan. 6 and the first day for students a day later to Jan. 7. By shifting the first workday, staff would get two full weeks off for the winter holiday.
“I’ve learned that there are five priorities that are really kind of non-negotiables with our community and scale, and that is we don’t want to start too early in August,” FCS Board President Kimberly Dove said. “We want a week of Thanksgiving. We want two weeks at Christmas. We want a spring break, and we want everyone to finish before Memorial Day. So that makes it extremely challenging.
Board members said they received feedback from staff, students and parents during recent community meetings about the 2025-2026 instructional calendar and appreciated the work of the calendar committee.
The Board suggested consideration of additional student and staff breaks in October 2025 and March 2026. As they requested for next year’s instructional calendar, they wanted the start of the second semester in January 2026 to ensure staff gets two full weeks off for the winter holiday. More teacher workday and professional development for staff was another request for the calendar. And they want to maintain the 190-day work calendar for teachers.
FCS Vice President Katha Stuart said that it would be ideal for students to be in school for 180 days. But she believes they need to ease their way up to that number.
The 2025-2026 instructional calendar remains in the proposal stage. A draft version of the calendar can be viewed online, with a comparison to the current calendar and the 2024-2025 calendars available.