You can now make your vacation plans for next year.
The long-awaited NYC Department of Education calendar has been released. The three key dates to know:
- With Easter and Passover weeks apart, many families were waiting to see how the country’s largest school system would divide the days off. Spring break will land in late April (22nd-30th), with a day off on March 26, Good Friday, before Easter.
- Election Day is a remote instruction day. Voting in New York has turned into more of a season now with early voting taking over many schools and institutions across the city (it’s somewhat controversial as facilities like gym and libraries become off limits).
- The first and last day of school are late, really late. Thursday, Sept. 10 is the start and the last day is Monday, June 28.
The school calendar determines the rhythms of city life far beyond the families served by New York City public schools, from commutes to commerce. In recent years, meeting the 180-day instruction mandate has been made harder by the addition of cultural holidays such as Lunar New Year, Juneteenth, Diwali and Eid(s).
That tension made headlines recently. A New York magazine story earlier this month quoted parents complaining that all the holidays and need for backup childcare is hurting their careers (paywall). That drew some side eye from some of us (yes, we at Epicenter also take off for Juneteenth and Indigenous People’s Day). Check out this video from Queens moms Deepti Sharma and Jennifer Chowdhury that explains why giving schoolchildren holidays off is so important. And maybe, they say, the problem is not the school calendar but the lack of support for working families and backup childcare.
Just 66 days until the last day of school.
