Mat-Su elementary, secondary schools to keep separate calendars for 2025-26

What you need to know:

• Mat-Su district calendars approved for the 2025-26 school year continue to give elementary students three fewer instructional days than middle and high school students. The calendars also maintain the district’s Monday late-start time for students.
• The first day of school for grades 1-12 is scheduled for Aug. 14, while kindergarten and pre-K begin on Aug. 21. The school year is set to end on May 20, 2026 with May 21 designated as a teacher workday.
• The calendars do not add any new snow make-up days, despite a recent policy change that eliminates the option for remote learning when school buildings are closed due to bad weather.

PALMER – Mat-Su elementary and secondary students will continue on slightly different school calendars for the 2025-26 school year under plans approved by the school board this week.

The calendars maintain a plan used this school year that gives elementary students three fewer instructional days than students in the district's middle and high schools. Those no-class elementary school days are instead designated as teacher work, professional development or parent-teacher conference days, according to the calendar.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board unanimously approved the elementary and secondary calendars during a meeting Wednesday.

The schedules also continue the district's one-hour late start for students each Monday, with that time set aside for teacher development. The district first implemented the Monday late start plan in 2023.

The calendars apply to most students in Mat-Su District schools. The district's charter schools may operate on different schedules, and plans for those specific schools for the 2025-26 school year have not yet been announced. All current calendars can be found on the district's website.

The first day of school for 2025-26 is scheduled for Aug. 14 for students in first grade through high school. Kindergartners and district pre-K students will start a week later, on Aug. 21.

For teachers, the school year will begin Aug. 6, with one work day and three professional learning days before students arrive -- a reduction of one designated work day from this year's calendar. Some of those professional learning hours will still be available for other teacher tasks, such as setting up classrooms, district administrators said.

Elementary teachers have a total of three parent-teacher conference days, four work days, five professional development days, and one day to complete tasks required by the Alaska Reads Act. Secondary teachers will have two parent-teacher conference days, four work days, and four professional development days.

The 2025-26 school year will end for students on May 20, with May 21 designated as a teacher work day. Students and staff may also be asked to return on May 22 if a weather-related makeup day is needed, district officials said.

Alaska school districts are required to provide 170 days of instruction under state law. Mat-Su receives an annual waiver from the state to instead count instructional time by hours – 740 hours per year for kindergarten through third grade and 900 hours for all others – so it can operate its short instructional day each Monday, district officials said.

The district's annual calendars also include a buffer of extra instructional days beyond the state minimum, with five extra days for secondary students and two for elementary students in case of weather closures, officials said.

While a designated snow makeup day is a regular feature of the district's annual calendar, it has gone unused in recent years. The district instead required remote learning on days that would have otherwise been canceled for bad weather, a system first used in 2020 when school buildings were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But that virtual plan ended in early December after Deena Bishop, commissioner of the state Department of Education and Early Development, told districts that such learning should not count toward instructional days.

Mat-Su officials did not build any additional snow days into the 2025-26 calendar to replace the loss of remote learning.

Instead, district officials said they would return to the pre-pandemic plan of making midyear calendar adjustments as needed.

That process was already tested earlier this month after a spate of Upper Valley school closures in January triggered by ice and dangerous road conditions left district officials scrambling to add required instructional days for those students.

The school board on Feb. 5 approved revised calendars this month for Susitna Valley Junior/Senior High School, Talkeetna Elementary, Trapper Creek Elementary and Willow Elementary. Instructional days were added by converting some parent-teacher conferences and work days to instructional days.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com