UPDATE – This district calendar is now finalized. See this updated link for more information.
Dearborn Public Schools is tweaking its tentative calendar for the 2023-24 school year to delay the start of early release Tuesdays.
The early release of students, originally set to begin on Sept. 5, will now be delayed until Oct. 10. This change will allow families and schools more time to make plans regarding the new calendar. The district is also working to develop plans to provide a supervised activity for K-8 students who need a place to be during the 90 minutes on Tuesday afternoons.
The district’s calendar is still tentative pending approval by the Board of Education. The calendar is one piece of a much larger new contract with the Dearborn Federation of Teachers. DFT members approved the contract, including the calendar, earlier this week. The Board of Education is expected to vote on the new contract on Monday, Aug. 21.
The district does not generally release the calendar until it is approved and even then sometimes needs to make changes. However, given that school starts on Aug. 28, there was more urgency in releasing the calendar to allow parents and staff time to plan for the changes. The most up-to-date calendar information can always be found on the district’s website at www.dearbornschools.org/calendars.
Dearborn Schools released the first version of the calendar on Aug. 7. It showed that monthly late starts and most half days are being replaced with early releases on most Tuesdays. The updated version of the calendar now calls for early releases on any school Tuesdays from October through May. Early release means students will get out 90 minutes before their regular dismissal time.
While initially a large change, the district hopes parents will find the set schedule easier than dealing with the disruption of seven late start Wednesdays and more frequent half days. The new calendar has only five half days including the first and last days of school, Jan. 8 for all students, Oct. 27 only for elementary and Jan. 9 only for middle and high schools.
Staff will use this early release time for work in their professional learning communities. Teachers have asked the district to provide more time for these responsibilities during their regular work day.
The district chose Tuesdays as early release days to simplify planning for staff and families by keeping schedule variations as much as possible to one day of the week. Three Tuesdays were already going to be days off school – one for Eid and two due to elections, which the district uses for professional development. By adding the other professional development day and early release on Tuesdays, it simplifies the calendar for families. Parents will not need to deal with a day off for election and then an early release on a different day that week. There are also research-based reasons for doing this type of work on Tuesdays during the school week.
School lunches will still be served on early release Tuesdays.
As previously announced, the first day of school will be Monday, Aug. 28, 2023. It is again a half day. New this year is that school open houses will be held on Aug. 25, the Friday before school starts. Each school will select what time that afternoon to hold its open house.
For kindergarten students, the soft start was shortened from what was announced in the spring. Kindergarten students will now only have half days from Aug. 28 through Sept. 5.
Many other items in the calendar will be familiar to parents, including a four day weekend over Labor Day, three days off at Thanksgiving, two weeks off for the holidays, a week of spring break at the end of March, and April 9 and 10 off for Eid. The last day of school will be June 7, 2024. As part of an earlier than usual end of school, the mid-winter break in February and Memorial Day weekend were shortened to three day weekends with only the Mondays off.
Another academic change this year will be a realignment of marking periods so that the first semester ends before the holiday break in December. High school students will take their first semester finals before break. All students will return on Jan. 8 to a half day as the second semester starts.
School start times and end times this year will remain the same except for early release Tuesdays. Those times include:
- High school – 7:50 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., half day ending at 10:55 a.m., early release Tuesdays ending at 1:15 p.m.
- Middle school and K-8 campuses – 8:25 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., half day ending at 11:30 a.m., early release Tuesdays ending at 1:50 p.m. This includes all of McCollough Elementary and Salina Elementary and Intermediate.
- Elementary School – 9:00 a.m. to 3:55 p.m., half day ending at 12:05 p.m., early release at 2:25 p.m.
- Lowrey School – Elementary 8:15 a.m. to 3:10 p.m., half day ending at 11:20 a.m. and early release ending at 1:40 p.m.. Middle school 8:10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m., half days ending at 11:15 a.m., early release at 1:35 p.m.
- Early College at HFC 8:00 a.m. to 2:25 p.m., half day ending at 10:45 a.m. and early release at 12:55.
- The Heights Campus: DCMST, MBCC and Magnet High – 8:05 a.m. to 2:25 p.m., half day ending at 10:45 a.m., early release at 12:55 p.m. STEM Middle School 7:50 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., half day ending at 10:55 a.m. and early release at 1:15 p.m.
Print-friendly versions of the calendar are available at the district’s website by scrolling to the bottom of the page at https://dearbornschools.org/calendars/. Parents are reminded to check with their child’s school for important events and activities unique to their school and not appearing on the district calendar.
Tentative calendar documents
District calendar graphic – TENTATIVE Aug. 16, 2023
District calendar text – TENTATIVE Aug. 16, 2023
التقويم المدرسي
Kindergarten soft start dates 2023 TENTATIVE (updated Aug. 7, 2023)
بداية روضة أطفال لينة
Parent teacher conferences & marking periods TENTATIVE Aug. 7, 2023 in English and Arabic