Liberty Hill ISD moves toward more 4-day weeks for 2025-26 school year
LIBERTY HILL, Texas (KXAN) — The Liberty Hill Independent School District Board of Trustees approved the 2025-26 academic calendar during its regular meeting Tuesday evening.
The district will move to a “hybrid approach” schedule next year by implementing four-day weeks throughout much, but not all, of the school year.
Specific Fridays throughout the year were designated as teacher workdays. The months of October and November of 2025 will have four-day weeks, as well as January, February, March and May of 2026. The full calendar can be viewed online.
The board said it did this for multiple reasons, primarily citing an anticipated budget reduction of $4.5 million. The district will need to cut more than 50 positions, which will increase workloads, create larger class sizes, and reduce classroom support.
Specific Fridays were designated as teacher workdays to mitigate those challenges and give educators time for planning and collaboration, the board said.
LHISD said by implementing the hybrid approach, the district aims to provide teachers with essential time to plan lessons and complete required tasks, reduce teacher fatigue and support retention of high-quality educators, and improve recruitment efforts.
According to the LHISD website, trustees took “extensive feedback from parents, teachers, and staff,” ahead of adopting the new calendar, which introduces “strategic changes aimed at supporting teachers while maintaining our mission of building future-ready graduates.”
The state mandates that school districts provide a minimum of 75,600 instructional minutes per year, with a minimum school day length of seven hours, according to LHISD. The district received waivers for professional development days, and the calendar includes 160 instructional days (with an added 10 minutes each day) and 20 professional development days during the school year. That allowed the district to bank one bad weather day.
According to LHISD, under the newly approved calendar:
- The first day of school will be August 12, 2025.
- December 19, 2025, will be an early release day before winter break.
- The last day of school is set for May 28, 2026, with graduation on May 29, 2026.
- Based on feedback, high school will start earlier than middle school to reduce class time missed for extracurricular activities. Final start/end times will be determined by the end of the 2024-25 school year.
