2024-2025 Calendar Approved

Thank you to all of the staff who took the time to review the draft 2024-2025 calendar that was shared in February and share your feedback through Staff Engage. Participation in our calendar engagements has been steadily increasing over the last couple of years and we appreciate your willingness to engage with us about the calendar as well as other topics that have been shared for your feedback.

The Board reviewed all of the feedback that was received from staff through the Staff Engage platform as well as from parents and the public on NLPS Engage, requested several changes based on that feedback, and then approved a revised calendar at its meeting on Wednesday, February 28th.

There were three main aspects of the calendar that were commented on most frequently in the feedback. These were the school year start date, having a March break versus a break aligned with Easter, and potentially shifting IGNITE to the day after Halloween.

In the approved calendar, students will start after the Labour Day long weekend. To accommodate the later start date for students and maintain balanced semesters, the professional development day originally designated on October 11 was shifted to August, maintaining the previous practice of including one PD day and three organizational days for staff prior to the start of the school year, ensuring teachers have time in their classrooms to prepare before students return to school. As well, the no school Friday originally scheduled for December 6th was removed.

IGNITE remains on October 28. While staff and parents noted some advantages to shifting the event to November 1st, holding the event on a Friday creates other challenges, including negatively impacting the ability of staff and students to participate in extracurricular activities scheduled to take place that day and over the weekend.

Due to the feedback received, the Board chose to change the spring break that had been proposed for the end of March to align with Easter instead. It will now take place April 14-21 instead of March 24-28. Due to that change, the PD day scheduled for March 7 was moved to the 28th and a no school day was added on March 14.

All other proposed no school days and professional development days, including a two-week break at Christmas, and a no school day prior to teachers’ convention remain as originally proposed.

To simplify the calendar and address some of the feedback received in the calendar consultation, all non-operational days that are not associated with specific holidays are now referred to as “no school” days. The number of operational days remains the same as previous years, at 192. The number of instructional days within that is now 180, providing staff and schools with some flexibility in ensuring instructional hours are met while dealing with the increased absences of students and staff, inclement weather days, and other emergent issues that can result in disruptions to classroom instruction.

The final version of the calendar is available on our website: 2024-2025 School Calendar.