Academic calendar for Harris County School District released

HAMILTON, Ga. ( WRBL ) — The Harris County School District (HCSD) has approved its academic calendar for the 2025-2026 school year.

The specifics of the calendar are as follows:

• Students begin school on Thursday, August 7
• Students return to school after winter break on January 6
• Last day of school year for students will be May 22
• 89 days/91 days balance between 1st and 2nd semester

HCSD says spring break has been set for the end of March and the beginning of April so it falls in line with Muscogee County School District’s spring break in hopes that it is least impactful to families and parent’s work schedules.

The School District says the calendar went through several developmental steps in order to meet a certain criteria. These steps included:

• Start teacher in-service days on the second working day of August
• 180 student days
• 10 professional learning days
• Spring Break aligned with Muscogee County (in consideration of parents who work in Columbus and special childcare opportunities for that week)
• Student days divided as evenly as possible by 9 weeks/semester
• Attempted observation of federal holidays
• Stakeholder (parent, teacher, and community) input

HCSD K-4 Curriculum Director David Dennie said, “We take setting the calendars very seriously and while we work to ensure that we have input from stakeholders, we realize that no single calendar will satisfy all stakeholders. We appreciate everyone who took the time to share their insight so we could make them the best possible calendars.”

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