Pick Your Favorite Calendar for 2025-26!
It's time once again for our calendar survey!
If you're new to Brave Nation, then here's a quick explanation on how the school calendar development process goes.
- The calendar committee meets in September and creates multiple options for some of our student, staff, and parent stakeholder groups to consider.
- After collecting input from those groups across October and November, we narrow down those multiple options (five this year) to two finalists.
- We then ask all students 5th grade through 11th grade, all parents/guardians, and all staff to vote on the two final calendar options, and take that data to the Community ISD Board of Trustees in January.
- The Board will consider the data from all of our stakeholders and this survey, and then approve a calendar at the January 13, 2025 meeting that will be available for students, parents, and staff to download that evening. This final calendar will show only the schedule for students - we now create separate staff calendars for each of our different employee groups - teachers, child nutrition, district staff, etc.
Unfortunately both of our finalists see some small changes from this year's calendar, as the State of Texas has slightly changed how our required 75,600 minutes of instruction are calculated. For four-day instructional districts only, we can now no longer count teacher professional development days towards that 75,600 minutes. Previously all school districts were allowed to file up to five days (2,100 minutes) of professional development as instructional time. Five-day school districts are still allowed to do so.
With that restriction in mind, we took two approaches with these final options.
1) Add days to the calendar
2) Add minutes to the day
While both calendars have compromises, these two stood out as the most acceptable of our five initial choices when considered by all stakeholder groups.
Please take a moment to cast your vote for your favorite calendar. No one is allowed to vote more than once, and the surveys are broken out by students (5th-11th only), parents, and staff. Staff that are also parents of CISD students can vote in both groups. Votes can be cast until January 6, 2025.
You can click on the image of either calendar to download a PDF version.
2025-26 Calendar - Finalists
Option #1 - 505 Minutes
Option #1 of our two finalist calendars has been nicknamed "505 minutes", as it would increase the current school day by five minutes to avoid adding more days to the calendar. Here's a few other notable things about this calendar:
- It has only one Friday where students are in school the entire day - the first week of school (August 15) - and one Friday half-day at the end of the year (May 29).
- Staff would work on the first Friday of each month except April (Good Friday), when they would work the second Friday instead.
- Teacher inservice would start August 1 and run Monday-Friday through August 8.
- Teachers would have a full day of work on May 29.
- May 29 for students would be an early release day.
Option #2 - Fridays Around Holidays
Option #2 of our two finalist calendars has been nicknamed "Fridays around Holidays", as we would have a Friday in school around every major Federal holiday. Here's a few other notable things about this calendar:
- Students would be in school the Friday after Labor Day (September 5) but still have a four-day week that week by being off on Labor Day.
- Students would be in school the Friday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 21), the Friday before Christmas break (Dec. 19), and the Friday before Spring Break (Mar. 13).
- Students would be in school the Friday after Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day (Jan. 23) but still have a four-day week by being off on MLK Day.
- Staff would work one Friday a month except August (1, 8, 15), January (2 & 23), and March (6 & 13).
- Teacher inservice would start August 1 and run Monday-Friday through August 8.
- Teachers would have a full day of work on May 22.
- May 22 for students would be an early release day.