The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday approved a single, unified school calendar in an effort to make scheduling easier for families.
All students this year will start on the same day: August 26. That ends a long-held practice of starting classes after Labor Day.
"We are one District, with one vision and we want to provide our school community with one calendar that makes sense from the classroom to the kitchen table," CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in a written statement when the plan was first proposed last week. "Families all across our city struggle to coordinate busy schedules with school, work and play and this unified calendar was designed to best meet the needs of our families’ home lives while giving our schools the time they need to implement a rigorous curriculum."
With the new calendar, students will have three days of vacation at Thanksgiving, winter break will run from Dec. 23 to Jan. 3 and spring break from April 14 to April 19.
The last day of school is slated for June 10, 2014.
