With only one week of school left before winter break, the light at the end of the tunnel is approaching for MCPS students. Finally, we’ll be able to kiss school goodbye for the rest of the calendar year and enjoy 12 full days out of the classroom.
As the longest break besides summer vacation, winter break feels like the natural halfway point in the school year. But, once students return on Jan. 2, instead of starting the second semester refreshed, they will be forced to dive right back into the first semester. With first semester grades on the line, students return to school with almost four weeks left in the second quarter to boost or maintain their grades, meaning stress from before break carries over and intensifies in the new year.
For the well-being of students, it makes more sense for winter break to mark the end of the first semester. This allows students to leave assignments and stress in the old year and use winter break to truly relax and take their mind off of school before starting fresh in the second semester. In order to accomplish this, the school year should both start and end earlier.
Instead of beginning in September, the school year should begin a few weeks earlier in mid to early August so that the natural end of the first semester falls just before winter break. This not only allows students more time off between the two semesters, but also means summer break would start in late May.
The earlier start to summer break solves yet another problem with the MCPS calendar. With the current school year calendar, students take their AP exams in early May, and then have several more weeks of school until mid-June, where teachers often assign busywork and students take liberties to skip class. With school ending in late May instead, the time between the end of exams and the end of the school year is minimized and time spent in class learning and preparing for AP exams is maximized.
With the MCPS calendar for the 2025-2026 school year having been recently announced, MCPS has not made any drastic changes to the calendar such as the one I am proposing. But, maybe in the future MCPS will consider a school year that both starts and ends earlier, benefitting the wellbeing and exam preparation of students.