Updated October 4, 2026. We re-read all 30 calendars date by date and found that our first count was off for 19 districts, by 1 to 8 days. This page now has the corrected numbers. The headline holds — the typical district still has about 26 days — but some districts moved a lot: Cobb County from 25 to 33, Fulton County from 24 to 30, Dallas ISD from 25 to 28. Everything that changed: Cobb County 25 → 33, Fulton County 24 → 30, Dallas ISD 25 → 28, Chicago Public Schools 24 → 26, Denver Public Schools 27 → 25, Hawaii (statewide) 27 → 25, Baltimore County 24 → 25, Clark County (Las Vegas) 22 → 21, Fairfax County 28 → 29, Gwinnett County 25 → 24, Hillsborough County 54 → 55, Houston ISD 23 → 24, Los Angeles Unified 26 → 25, Miami-Dade County 24 → 23, Montgomery County 29 → 28, New York City Public Schools 23 → 22, Palm Beach County 23 → 24, Polk County 32 → 31, Wake County (Raleigh) 23 → 24. Every district now has its own page with the dates: school calendars by district.

Across the 30 largest public school districts in the US, the typical district has about 26 weekdays in the 2026–27 school year when school is out, or lets out early, and it isn't a federal holiday. Federal holidays add only 5 to 9 more days on top of that. The range runs from 21 days in the lowest districts to 55 in the highest. For a family with two working parents, every one of those roughly 26 days needs an answer before it arrives — a named parent, or a backup — because school is either closed or ending in the middle of a workday, and nobody's employer calendar has that date on it.

Here are the twelve districts with 28 or more of these days, and the four with the fewest (23 or fewer). The full 30-district table, with a source link for every number, is at the bottom of this page.

The four districts with the fewest:

Where the days come from

These days are built from four things, and federal holidays are not one of them: teacher workdays and professional-development days; parent-teacher conference days, which some districts run district-wide and others leave to individual schools; every weekday inside a fall, winter or spring break; and district-wide early-release days, when every school lets out early on the same date. Add those up and you get the plan-days count for each district.

Federal holidays are the small, predictable part: 5 to 9 per district, close to the same dates everywhere, because most employers observe them too. The rest — 18 to 30 days off for students, before any early releases — don't line up with any employer's calendar, don't repeat the same way year to year, and are set by a school board rather than a federal statute — which is exactly why they're the days that catch two working parents without a plan.

The early-release problem

Early release is the least visible part of the count and the most disruptive: a normal Wednesday quietly becomes a 12:15 dismissal. Of the 30 districts, 11 publish district-wide early-release days that apply to every school. The other 19 publish none at the district level — some leave it to individual schools or to one grade band (Miami-Dade, for example, releases elementary and K-8 students an hour early every Wednesday), so there's no single page to check.

Hillsborough County, FL, releases every student early every Monday, district-wide — 31 school Mondays in 2026–27, plus an early release on the last day of school. That's the closest thing in the sample to a standing weekly schedule rather than occasional half days, and it's why Hillsborough is the outlier at 55.

Miami-Dade County, FL, releases elementary (grades 2–5) and K-8 center (grades 2–8) students an hour early every Wednesday — a standing weekly change for those families, but not district-wide, so it isn't in the count.

Fairfax County, VA, publishes 4 district-wide early releases — three end-of-quarter days and the last day of school. Its elementary schools also have "Limited Early Release Wednesdays" on dates each school announces, not on the district calendar, so there's no specific day a parent can put on a calendar in August.

Prince George's County, MD, has the most single days off in the sample, 8 — among them Yom Kippur, Election Day, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha — and 8 district-wide early dismissals: seven Fridays and the last day of school.

Florida vs Texas

The seven Florida districts in the sample average 30.1 plan-days — 26.0 without Hillsborough County's every-Monday early release. The six Texas districts average 26.3, and five of the six publish no district-wide early-release day (Dallas ISD publishes two). That doesn't mean Texas schools skip early release; it means the information lives somewhere other than one calendar, which for a working parent is the same problem stated differently: one PDF to check, or a search across a dozen individual school calendars.

What to do with this

The fix isn't guessing better in October. It's doing once, in August, what a well-run team does at the start of a quarter: put the dates down before anyone needs them.

• 1. Put every plan-day on both parents' calendars in August. Not just the multi-day breaks — the single teacher workdays, conference days, and every early release, with the dismissal time in the title. Our free planner does the dates for you: pick your district, see every date, say who covers each one, and send the list to your partner or add it all to your calendar.

• 2. Decide the default parent per day type, not day by day. Teacher workdays default to one parent, conference days to the other, early releases alternate — settled once, not renegotiated each time the school emails.

• 3. Build the backup list before you need it. A grandparent, a neighbor, a sitter who covers half days — in order, numbers saved, chosen on a calm weekend rather than the morning of.

• 4. Revisit at each break. Districts add snow days, move conference dates and post mid-year updates the August calendar didn't have. A five-minute check before each break catches what's changed.

Two related pieces go through the mechanics in more detail: early-release days, and who stays home on a sick day.

Where Zazu fits

Zazu lives in WhatsApp and iMessage, so putting these days on two calendars isn't one more app to open. With permission, it reads the family's school emails and calendars, tells both parents what's coming, and asks who's taking each plan-day by name — never booking, replying or adding anything without a yes first. It's US only right now, free for 7 days, then $19 a month.

Methodology and data

For each of the 30 largest US public school districts, we read the official 2026–27 calendar the district itself publishes (re-read day by day on October 4, 2026) and counted every weekday students are off — teacher workdays, conference and professional-development days, election days, local and religious holidays, and each weekday of fall, winter and spring break — plus every district-wide early-release day, where all grade levels dismiss early on the same date. Those two together are plan-days; federal holidays are counted separately. Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, December 25, January 1, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Memorial Day always count as federal holidays. Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day, Veterans Day, Presidents' Day and Juneteenth count as federal holidays only where the district closes school for that holiday by name; where school is closed on one of those dates for another reason, such as a teacher workday, it stays in the plan-days. Single days off are days off with school in session both the weekday before and the weekday after. Left out: early releases published for only one grade band, remote-learning days, pre-service staff days, optional per-school days, and Memorial Day where it falls after the last day. Dates a calendar holds as possible weather make-up days are counted as days off where the calendar shows them as no-school days. The median across all 30 districts is 26; the average across the 29 districts without an every-week early release is 26.3, and 27.3 including Hillsborough County, FL, whose 32 early-release days put it at 55.

The full table below has every district we counted, with a link to that district's own calendar as the source and to our day-by-day page. If you find a date that's changed, or think we read a calendar wrong, tell us at hello@getzazu.io and we'll correct it. This dataset is free to reuse with a link back to this page.

Once you know the days, the harder question is who covers them. Play Who does it?, a free 60-second game for couples: each of you says who handles ten everyday jobs at home, then you see both answers side by side, including the jobs each of you thinks the other one does.