As the current school year enters its final stretch, the Fairfax County School Board is considering tweaking the calendar for the next year in response to mounting complaints about disruptions to class schedules.
At the board’s meeting tomorrow (Thursday), members led by governance committee chair Melanie Meren will propose nixing Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Veterans Day as official student holidays and limiting the number of scheduled early release days to four per year.
“Partial school weeks function as an informal ‘childcare tax’ that falls hardest on our hourly-wage and most vulnerable households,” said Meren, whose committee has been discussing a new calendar policy. “My goal is to adjust the 2026-27 calendar to increase the number of five-day school weeks.”
If the motions are approved, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which will fall on Oct. 12 this year, and Veterans Day — observed annually on Nov. 11 — would become standard instructional days for both students and staff going forward. Fairfax County Public Schools would implement a curriculum to teach students about the groups that the occasions are intended to recognize.
Meren, who represents the Hunter Mill District, didn’t immediately comment on why those days were targeted, but FCPS didn’t designate Veterans Day as a student holiday until the 2022-2023 school year. The school board voted in 2020 to recognize the federal holiday on the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day, joining a growing number of localities and states across the U.S. to make the change.
FCPS began testing three-hour early releases on Mondays for elementary school students in the 2024-2025 school year to provide additional preparation and training time to teachers. Eight early-release days on Wednesdays were incorporated into the current year.
However, the timing and frequency of those days has proven disruptive for many families, requiring them to take time off work or find child care alternatives that otherwise aren’t needed, according to Mount Vernon District School Board Representative Mateo Dunne, who is slated to introduce the proposed four-day limit.
“They’re in the middle of the week at a time when parents are working, and they don’t have readily available and affordable child care options,” Dunne told FFXnow. “So, we need to be sensitive to the burden that the school system places on families when the school division acts in its own interest for its own convenience.”
He added that it’s unclear whether early releases are actually effective at giving teachers more planning and training time, since FCPS promised to provide oversight for students who stay on site instead of taking an early bus home. The transportation costs of bussing students both at the early release time and regular dismissal times also adds up.
Concerns about FCPS’ calendar first cropped up in September when Mason District Representative Ricardy Anderson and at-large board member Ryan McElveen reported receiving complaints that the 2025 summer break was too short.
For decades, Virginia had a so-called “Kings Dominion law” requiring the first day of classes to come after Labor Day to support the tourism industry. FCPS received a waiver allowing classes to begin before Labor Day starting in 2017, and state lawmakers ultimately passed legislation in 2019 letting schools begin up to 14 days before Labor Day, provided that students still get time off for the holiday and its preceding Friday.
According to Dunne, after setting an earlier start date, the Fairfax County School Board intended to move up the last day of school from late June, but no changes were ever made.
“The result was a permanent loss of two weeks of summer from students and families,” he said.
FCPS now has the longest school year at 303 days and a 62-day summer break, shorter than any other locality in the D.C. region, Dunne says.
At the same time, between the early release days and various student holidays for cultural or religious occasions or staff development, just over half (52%) of its weeks include five full days of instruction — and that’s before adding in closures for the weather and special elections.
“Something has to change,” Anderson said in a press release. “Parents are concerned about the lack of summer and the constant disruptions throughout the school year.”
In an acknowledgment of the scheduling complaints, FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid announced on March 25 that two early release days planned for this month have been canceled. The school system will instead have a teacher workday and staff development day on April 21 — when classes have been canceled to accommodate polling sites for the special election on the proposed redistricting constitutional amendment.
Virginia law requires schools to provide at least 180 days or 990 hours of instructional time to students.
According to FCPS, the school board directed Reid and school administrators in early 2023 to create a school calendar by July 1 at least two years prior to the year being reviewed. The board also voted that February to have its governance committee work with the superintendent on an updated calendar policy.
That year, the board approved calendars through the 2025-2026 school year. While calendars for 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 have been posted on the FCPS website, they haven’t been formally approved by the school board as required by state law, Dunne says.
“FCPS supports a school calendar that prioritizes teaching and learning and exceeds state required instructional hours as we continue to provide a world class education for students,” FCPS said in a statement.
