The Abridged version:
- Sacramento City Unified trustees approved a permanent change to the academic calendar, bringing students back to school in mid-August and ending the year in late May.
- The district was traditionally one of the last in the region to begin the school year. A teacher strike in 2022 led to a temporary earlier start in 2024 and 2025.
- Parents in favor of the change cited benefits like better alignment with other districts and moving fall finals ahead of winter break. Opponents raised concerns about August heat and more crowded vacations.
Students in the Sacramento City Unified School District will be back in classrooms a little bit earlier from here on out.
The district board on Thursday approved a permanent academic calendar change, solidifying a mid-August start date and end-of-May last day.
Officials said the change puts Sacramento City Unified more in line with neighboring districts and come with several benefits, particularly for older students.
Some parents endorsed the decision, in two surveys distributed since September. Others pushed back, criticizing a move that would cut their families’ summer short for a third year in a row.
Early starts began in 2024
Sacramento City Unified schools have historically been among the last sites in the area to begin the fall semester.
But after a teacher strike in spring 2022 put classrooms at a standstill for eight days, the district retroactively accounted for the missing time by scooching their start up eight days in 2024 and 2025.
The move saved Sacramento City Unified from about $40 million in penalties.
(State education code requires makeup days equal twice those missed. The district has previously acknowledged that most of the students spending extra days in school were not from the same cohort who lost time three years ago.)
Sacramento City Unified’s new norm
Now, a mid-August start will be the status quo.
Board members voted 5-0 Thursday to implement the change. (Two trustees, including Board President Jasjit Singh, were absent.)
“For me, I’ve always been a fan of changing our calendar,” Trustee Taylor Kayatta said. “I didn’t grow up here in Sacramento. This calendar always struck me as odd.”
Survey says…
Parents received a six-question survey in September, asking how they felt about a handful of advantages that the district believed would result from the shift.
These included graduation ceremonies in relatively cooler weather, better summer employment, internship or camp opportunities, and more time to prepare for AP or IB exams.
The survey asked parents to rate each pro as “Very important to me,” “Important to me, “Not very important to me” or “Not important to me at all.”
Results presented at Thursday’s meeting showed that most of the 1,440 respondents determined each benefit to be “very important.” The most popular change was moving first semester final exams to before winter break, giving student “a needed mental break.”
Parents get a chance to comment
District officials sent out a follow-up questionnaire, a week before the board was set to weigh in.
Parents had the opportunity to say if they would favor, oppose or have no preference regarding a calendar update. Out of 1,670 respondents, 60 percent said they approved, 30 percent opposed and 10 percent answered impartial.
Unlike the first survey, the second also provided space for commentary. Many answers echoed the advantages highlighted in the initial form.
“Please make this change,” one survey recipient wrote. “It aligns with other districts in the area. Makes it easier for parents to access camps and other summer activities that often start early June and end early August — well before when SCUSD has traditionally (returned) to school, leaving little options for SCUSD students those last few weeks of August.”
Several opponents to the change raised concerns about high August temperatures, as well as competition with families of other districts when planning and booking summer vacations.
“We love having a different academic calendar from the other districts so that we can enjoy vacation time without the crowds,” one naysaying parent wrote. “Also, why would we want to put our kids in school during the hottest months of the year?”
“August is too hot to have the kids in school,” wrote another. “Better to be able to go to the pool and enjoy summer instead of being stuck in a classroom with crappy air-conditioning.”
Savannah Kuchar is a reporter covering education. She came to Sacramento to be a part of the Abridged team and contribute to a crucial local news source.
This story was updated Nov. 21 7:17 a.m. to say Trustee Taylor Kayatta did not grow up in Sacramento.