Why Balanced School Calendars

• Learning Loss Mitigation – Students attending school on a balanced calendar do as well or slightly better in academic achievement than students on traditional schedules.
• Summer Slide Prevention – One of the goals of a balanced school calendar is to prevent the summer slide and spend less instruction time on review. Ideally, students won’t be so “rusty” when they return to school due to the shorter summer break duration.
• More Frequent Breaks from School – Though summer vacation may be shorter, there is more time throughout the year with a balanced school calendar. This is helpful with preventing burnout in both students and teachers. Teachers have more personal time throughout the year to schedule appointments, take trips, complete projects at home, and simply relax. Teachers are no longer waiting months at a time for a significant break.
• More Enrichment and Professional Development Opportunities – With more breaks from instruction throughout the year, P.K. Yonge can schedule enrichment activities for students and professional development training for teachers more easily. P.K. Yonge will also provide additional instruction and tutoring during breaks to help struggling students catch up on lessons. Students and teachers can continue to learn and improve even while on a break.
• Research-Based School Mission – As the Developmental Research School, P.K. Yonge has a mission to provide educational research. This pilot meets our mission by allowing P.K. Yonge to be the test site for the rest of Florida and provide peer-reviewed research to show the effects of balanced school calendars.

2025-2026 Calendar Dates

In 2025-2026, school will begin approximately 2 weeks earlier and will include a 2 week intersession after the first nine weeks of school. 

View the 2025-2026 Important Dates. The calendar is also available in a calendar format. 

Please review dates carefully. Dates for the P.K. Yonge school year are often slightly different from dates published for Alachua County Public Schools.

These dates are tentative until UF publishes their calendar. 

Tentative Future Calendar Dates

2026-2027 Tentative Dates – includes one Fall and one Spring Intercessions
July 14	First Day Teachers
July 23	First Day Students
May 26	Last Day Students
May 28	Last Day Teachers
2027-2028 Tentative Dates – includes two Fall and one Spring Intercessions
July 8	First Day Teachers
July 19	First Day Students
May 26	Last Day Students
May 31	Last Day Teachers
2028-2029 Tentative Dates – includes two Fall and two Spring Intercessions
July 6	First Day Teachers
July 17	First Day Students
May 25	Last Day Students
May 30	Last Day Teachers

Intersession Weeks

Intersession weeks will be built into the calendar for the next school year as we gradually implement to a full balanced calendar. In 2025-2026, the intersession weeks will be September 29-October 10. 

The purpose of these weeks is to provide intensive instruction or enrichment opportunities for students as well as an intentional break in schedule for both students and faculty. 

Planning has already begun for the fall 2025 intercession weeks. A committee is working on logistics for camps to be offered by P.K. Yonge and reaching out to community partners for other camp opportunities. 

P.K. Yonge will provide intercession week camps.

• Intensive camps will provide intense instruction for students who may need more help. In the past, we have offered SAIL, AIM, and Wayfinders during the summer – and will continue to do so – and the intersession intensive camps will be a shortened version of those. 
• Enrichment camps will provide students with faculty-led camps that are something fun and different from normal school instruction. 

P.K. Yonge partners will also provide intersession week camps at both on- and off-campus locations. These will include Blue Wave After School and other local youth agencies and programs. 

Athletics is also working on a plan for how practices and games will operate during intersession weeks. 

More information and a full list of camps will be provided by late spring semester. 

Extended Summers and Breaks Still Available

We want to be clear that this is not a year-round calendar but a balanced calendar. Extended summers will still be available for students. The proposed breaks as we gradually implement are below. 

2025-2026

• 8.5 weeks of Summer 2025
• 2 week Fall Intersession
• 1 week Thanksgiving Break
• 2.5 weeks Winter Break 
• 1 week Spring Break 

2026-2027 

• 7.5 weeks of Summer 2026
• 2 week Fall Intersession
• 1 week Thanksgiving Break
• 2.5 weeks Winter Break 
• 1 week Intersession Spring next to spring break 
• 1 week Spring Break 

2027-2028

• 7.5 weeks of Summer 2027
• 2 weeks Fall Intersession 
• 1 week Thanksgiving Break
• 1 week Winter Intersession next to winter break 
• 2.5 weeks Winter Break 
• 1 week Intersession Spring next to spring break 
• 1 week Spring Break 

2028-2029

• 7 weeks of Summer 2028
• 2 weeks Fall Intersession 
• 1 week Thanksgiving Break
• 1 week Winter Intersession next to winter break 
• 2.5 weeks Winter Break 
• 1 week Intersession Spring next to spring break 
• 1 week Spring Break 
• 1 week Summer Intersession at end of school year 

Questions

Please submit your questions about the 2025-2026 calendar and balanced calendar here. We will be working on an FAQ document to answer questions.