Duval Schools students and teachers will get the whole week off at Thanksgiving this fall.<\/p>\n
The School Board voted Tuesday to change its calendar for the 2026-27 school year.\u00a0The revised calendar shuffles scheduled student holidays but includes the same number of no-school days: 33.<\/p>\n
To make room for the longer break at Thanksgiving, a long weekend around Veteran\u2019s Day was eliminated. But to account for a required professional development day for teachers, Spring Break was increased by one day.<\/p>\n
The district also cut one of the planned hurricane days, which are treated as days off from school unless a storm creates an unexpected day off that needs to be made up. And, teachers will now work through June 4 instead of June 3.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Christopher Bernier said all other districts in Florida give a week off at Thanksgiving, and so this change brings Duval into alignment with surrounding communities. Earlier this school year, the district received criticism from parents and employees for scheduling a partial week off at Thanksgiving.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At a workshop last month<\/a> where the board discussed the calendar change, Bernier said student and staff attendance during the week of Thanksgiving were \u201cnot exactly highlights of perfect attendance.\u201d Providing the whole week off would allow families to \u201cplan their vacation without removing their students from instructional minutes,\u201d Bernier said.<\/p>\n Thanksgiving stress<\/p>\n Duval Schools\u2019 calendar is created by a committee of employees, parents and community stakeholders and approved by the School Board. Florida, like most states<\/a>, requires its districts to have 180 school days each year \u2014 and days off can create tension for parents<\/a> whose work schedules don\u2019t align.\u00a0<\/p>\n District 4 rep Darryl Willie said that was a factor in the district\u2019s earlier decision to not give a week off at Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n \u201cThe flip side of all this is you do have families that aren\u2019t able to take a vacation and have to work,\u201d Willie said. \u201cThere\u2019s a strain on some parents.\u201d <\/p>\n Bernier said \u201cpartner support\u201d from organizations the district works with for after-school programs could be helpful in finding solutions for those families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duval Schools students and teachers will get the whole week off at Thanksgiving this fall. The School Board…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":714002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,293431,56179,407,3188,723,7310,296946,50,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-714001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-america","tag-distribute","tag-duval-county-public-schools","tag-education","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-jacksonville","tag-jaxtdy3","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116370718650242468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}