While the instructional calendar for the 2026-2027 school year was approved by the Board of Education in December, the 2027-2028 school year’s was not, and the process of revising it is ongoing.
Normally, the Calendar Committee, a group of Association of Piedmont Teachers and California Schools Employees Association members, creates many options for the calendar for the two upcoming school years. They are created through a process outlined by the APT’s contract. The APT then votes for the top four calendars, one of which has to be as similar as possible to the previous year’s calendar. The calendars for the next two years that receive at least 50 percent of votes are then read twice by the Board of Education, who either approve or reject the calendars.
The calendar must include at least 180 student days, three professional development days, two work days (in August and June), and two semesters of approximately equal length, according to the Board of Education minutes.
The Calendar Committee then takes input from students and families into account, according to the minutes from the December Board of Education meeting. 455 people responded to a survey in the fall of 2025, and the majority of people who filled out the survey prioritized starting school later in August and keeping first semester finals before winter break.
“The committee worked so hard to take everybody’s needs into consideration with care and thought,” said math teacher and Calendar Committee member Auban Willats. “The requirements that we were given [by the Board of Education] feel like conflicting requirements that aren’t supported by our survey data.”
The 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 school year calendars, which were endorsed by 50.6 percent of APT members, were first read by the Board of Education during the Nov. 12, 2025 meeting, according to the minutes of that meeting.
At that meeting, the Board of Education directed the Calendar Committee to bring the 2026-2027 calendar to the meeting in Dec. 2025, where it was approved, while the 2027-2028 calendar was not because they felt it did not reflect parent’s priorities, superintendent Jennifer Hawn said.
The 2027-2028 calendar was first presented to the Board of Education on Nov. 12, 2025. It had school starting on Aug. 9, 2027, winter break from Dec. 20, 2027 to Jan. 4, 2028, and school ending on June 2, 2028, according to the Board of Education meeting minutes.
“Both calendars did not meet the needs of the parents and folks that responded in the survey that we sent out at the beginning of the year,” Board of Education President Ruchi Medhekar said. “As a board, we decided that we were going to approve one year because we needed to have the schedule out for the 2026-2027 academic year, but we had a little bit more time for the 2027-2028 school year.”
After receiving dissatisfaction with the current calendar, the Board of Education’s expectations were to have a later start, later finish, less three- and four-day weekends, having the same breaks and semester separation as the 2025-2026 school year, and not starting school on a Monday, Medhekar said. That was why the Board of Education did not approve the 2027-2028 calendar.
“What’s complicated and confusing is that there’s no language in our contract that dictates what happens after the winner of the APT votes is presented as a recommendation to the Board of Education,” said PHS social studies teacher and Calendar Committee chair Alli Cota. “We have reconvened the Calendar Committee to once again consider a wide variety of options in the hopes of advancing what we think will be the most viable ideas to the negotiating team given district feedback.”
The Calendar Committee, students, teachers, and district representatives met on April 30 to try and create a calendar for the 2027-2028 school year that met the requirements and could be approved, Willats said.
“Because the calendar affects teachers’ work days, it’s considered negotiable,” Hawn said. “This means APT and the district must come to an agreement on a calendar that goes to the Board of Education for possible approval.”
Willats said that from the survey conducted by the Calendar Committee, starting school on Aug. 9, 2027 would not conflict with any of the majority opinions from their data. However, the Board of Education would not approve a calendar that starts any earlier than Aug. 10, 2027, because starting school on a full week would push Walk-Through Registration and Open House for kindergarten back to Friday, Aug. 6, 2027.
For an Aug. 10, 2027 start date, Willats said that the calendars the district suggested would either have semester one ending on Dec. 23, 2027, or school ending and PHS graduation being on Tuesday, May 30, after Memorial Day.
Willats said that, based on the results of the Calendar Committee’s survey, starting with a full week of school was not a top priority, and that there is no perfect way to meet everyone’s preferences.
The Calendar Committee is continuing to meet in order to create a calendar that the Board of Education can approve.
“I think that a lot of people don’t understand that compromises have to be made,” junior Dahlia Strub said, who attended the Calendar Committee meeting on April 30. “The interest of the Calendar Committee is not only to make a calendar that will align with when families want to take a vacation, but also having the right amount of days of school.”
During the Calendar Committee meeting on May 7, the Calendar Committee whittled down 13 possible options to three main ones, including one preferred calendar from the teachers, students, staff members, and families that attended the meeting, Cota said. The Calendar Committee hopes that the favorite of all the stakeholders will be approved by the district negotiating team and move forward to the Board of Education.
“Everyone wants to get to the solution of having a calendar that works for the entire community and is out as far in advance as possible. I truly hope that the Board gets a calendar that is in line with our expectations and our family’s expectations,” Medhekar said.
