October 1, 2026 Newsletter
October 1, 2026
In This Edition:
1. APS Is Rewriting Its Calendar Policy. Weigh In Now.
2. Open Policies: Make Your Voice Heard
3. What We're Reading
4. What's Happening Soon
APS is Rewriting Its Calendar Policy.
Weigh In Now.
APS is reviewing Policy I-4.30, School Year Calendar, now. We are asking the Board to use that opportunity to strengthen instructional time and continuity, protect the predictability that comes from adopting calendars well in advance, and provide clearer rules for future calendar changes.
Last week's work session showed why this review matters
At the September 29 work session, the Board and staff repeatedly returned to the same issues families have been raising: instructional continuity, the number of actual school days, conference scheduling and the frequency with which APS reopens calendars after they have already been adopted. APS’ own presentation identified recurring community concerns including “instructional continuity” and the “placement of non-school days.”
The discussion was candid about APS’ recent history: “We have voted to change the calendar multiple times per year over the past several years, and I think we’d all prefer to stop doing that.”
The work session also acknowledged that APS’ current calendar structure is “making it challenging for us to get to 180 days of instruction.”
And middle-school conferences remain an open policy question. At the beginning of the work session, the Board was asked whether APS should “expressly enshrine conferences into our policy,” an issue that arose more than once this year.
Given this state of limbo, now is a particularly important time for families to weigh in.
A two-year calendar should actually provide stability
APS adopted its current calendar policy in September 2023. It requires calendars to be developed two years in advance and sets 180 instructional days every school year as its first listed criteria. APS has explained that advance development is intended to give students, staff and families time to plan for important dates, holidays and breaks.
Yet, in the time since that framework took effect, already-adopted calendars have repeatedly been reopened for foreseeable scheduling issues. For example, in July 2024, the Board changed the already-adopted 2024–25 calendar for professional learning, reducing instructional days. In November 2025, it revised the 2025–26 calendar for conferences. This August, the Board changed the already-adopted 2026–27 elementary conference schedule, again reducing instructional days.
Then came the middle-school change.
The 2026–27 and 2027–28 calendars were developed together and adopted well before the current school year began. The adopted 2026–27 calendar did not include dedicated middle-school conference closures.
After the school year began, APS announced that middle-school students would also have early release on October 8 and March 18 and no school on October 9 and March 19 for conferences (note this is more time off than APS historically schedules for middle school conferences). The School Board subsequently amended the calendar 4–1 on September 24.
During that discussion, Chair Miranda Turner summarized the governance concern directly: “Typically a vote precedes a communication.”
The question now is larger than any one change: what is the value of adopting calendars two years in advance if professional learning, conference structures and other predictable scheduling decisions are repeatedly resolved by reopening the calendar after adoption?
We support a stronger commitment to the stability of adopted calendars, and urge APS to not reopen an adopted calendar except under extraordinary circumstances. When APS proposes a later substantive change, families should be able to see why it could not reasonably have been addressed during normal calendar development, what alternatives were considered and what the instructional impact will be. And the normal public governance process should occur before a change is communicated as final.
180 days should mean 180 days
Historically, APS generally scheduled at least 180 instructional days. Our ten-year reviewfound that from 2013 through 2019, 181 days was the most common calendar, with some earlier secondary calendars reaching 182 or 183 days. APS treated instructional days as the floor and accumulated hours as additional protection.
Virginia permits divisions to satisfy the state requirement through either 180 instructional days or 990 instructional hours. But the policy question is not whether APS can accumulate enough minutes to meet the legal minimum. It is whether Arlington should continue to expect at least 180 actual days of school rather than organize its calendar around the Commonwealth’s 990-hour floor.
Importantly, Virginia’s 990-hour alternative is not an especially demanding benchmark. Looking specifically at 11th-grade annual instructional-time requirements, Pew Research Center reports 990 hours in Virginia compared with 1,062 in Louisiana, 1,068 in Arkansas, 1,080 in Alabama and Oklahoma and 1,260 in Texas. Pew cautions that states do not all define instructional time identically, so these figures are best understood as state minimum requirements rather than perfectly equivalent measures of classroom time.
Arlington families should reasonably expect one of the nation’s best-resourced public-school communities to provide students at least as much time in school as the minimums established in states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. The fact that Virginia sets a lower statutory floor should not become APS’ nor the Arlington community’s educational aspiration.
There are workable models nearby
Fairfax County has already made full instructional weeks a policy priority. Its revised calendar policy emphasizes academic and instructional continuity through full school weeks and explicitly directs the division to avoid fragmented weeks where possible.
That approach closely tracks what Arlington families told us. In our 2026 Community Survey, 82.6% rated minimizing three- and four-day school weeks and prioritizing at least 180 instructional days as extremely or very appealing, while 90.1% strongly or somewhat agreed that APS should work to provide more five-day school weeks.
Falls Church City Public Schools provides a useful nearby model. Like APS historically did, Falls Church separates religious accommodation from systemwide closure: students and employees can observe sincerely held beliefs through excused absences, appropriate accommodations and religious leave, while schools remain open unless operational conditions make closure necessary. We support that equitable approach rather than assigning different levels of calendar protection to different faith traditions. In our survey, 90.1% of 202 respondents supported the FCCPS model, including 78.7% who strongly agreed.
Additionally, nearby districts also show that middle-school conferences do not require a single model. For example, Fairfax County does not designate a separate middle-school parent-teacher conference closure on its 2026–27 division calendar, and Loudoun likewise does not identify a dedicated division-wide middle-school conference closure. Other nearby systems use different structures.
We support meaningful opportunities for middle-school families to communicate with teachers. The question APS should now examine with families and educators is how best to provide those opportunities while protecting instructional time. Evening meetings, virtual conferences, before- or after-school appointments and other models should be part of that discussion.
Make your voice heard - now
The Board’s work session made clear that these questions are not settled. Families should share their views on 180 actual instructional days, full five-day weeks, the stability of adopted calendars, equitable religious accommodation and the future structure of middle-school conferences.
The calendar is more than a collection of days off. It determines how consistently students learn, how much time they spend with teachers and whether families can rely on a calendar APS intentionally adopted years in advance.
Email the School Board
What We’re Reading and Listening To
Revised homework policy at APS seeks to ‘close gaps’ in learning (ArlNow)
“The goal is not just to give more homework and have more students be busy,” Superintendent Francisco Durán said…“It needs to be connected to the learning that’s already taken place during the day … [to] practice, strengthen and reinforce the learning that’s already happening”...Board member Kathleen Clark said students and their families need to develop routines to “set up the environment at home” for productive use of homework time. “That is really important for family success,” she said.
Virginia Board of Education Chooses “Approaching Expectations” for Fall School Ratings(Virginia Free Press)
State Superintendent Jenna Conway and the Board agreed that the “Approaching Expectations” label [for the second-lowest of four categories] should be revisited within a year, before the Fall 2027 ratings…to seek broader feedback—including from families—on alternatives such as “Partially Meets Expectations” or “Needs Support”...[Board member Amber Northern] was unsurprised that “Approaching” polled well with school system groups because it sounds more positive…Their approval, she said, “in no way implies that [the label is] doing the best for kids and families.”
Students Are Using AI for Everything. When Is It Cheating? (Arlington Magazine)
AI usage that breaks plagiarism and citation rules is widespread. Some students can’t be bothered to hide it, doing little more than copying and pasting the text spat out by AI into papers and assignments. “They’re not as sly as they think they are,” says Sean Tracy, a science teacher at Wakefield High School who leads classes in ecology and teaches advanced placement (AP) students how to write college-level research papers.
“I have received papers that have their query as the first line of the paper,”...[and he’s seen research papers where the last line is a follow-up question clearly written by AI: “Would you like your conclusion to sound more [professional or conversational]?”
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the Warning Signs She Missed (Chad Aldeman)
This week’s must-read is a long NY Times essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones about her daughter’s experience in NYC public schools…One of the most revealing parts of the essay is the disconnect between the signals Najya’s school was sending and what she actually knew. She earned A’s in eighth-grade algebra but failed the statewide exam. Hannah-Jones initially chalked up the discrepancy to Najya having trouble with standardized tests. (For any parent reading this at home, math “anxiety” is often the result of weak math instruction, not something innate to your child.)
Fish Can’t Climb Trees, But New York Students Can Learn Math (Chad Aldeman)
For decades now, New York’s [graduation] rules have said that students needed to earn course credits and pass statewide assessments in the core subjects…certify[ying] that the student demonstrated a minimum level of academic knowledge against an external standard…But beginning…in 2028, students will no longer have to demonstrate any particular level of performance on those exams. Instead, districts and schools will make up their own rules…That will make it easier for more students to earn a diploma. But it will also make it harder to know what that diploma means.
