Is there school on Veterans Day 2026? It depends on your district. Veterans Day is Wednesday, November 11, 2026. It is a federal holiday: federal offices, post offices and most banks close, but most private employers stay open. Of the 30 largest US school districts, 15 have no school for students that day and 15 stay open. Two of the 15 closed districts, Chicago and Prince George's County, close for a professional development day and for parent-teacher conferences, not for the holiday itself. None of the 30 has another day off that week, so it is one Wednesday with no school in a normal workweek. Check your district below.

The dates come from the same dataset of official 2026-27 district calendars behind our school calendars by district and our winter break 2026-27 dates. These are public school districts only. Private and charter schools set their own calendars, so check yours.

Is there school on Veterans Day 2026? The 30 largest districts

Closed districts first, then open ones, largest district first in each group. Each name opens that district's page with every day off this year.

The split follows state lines more than size. All six Texas districts in the table are open, and so are the three in Georgia. Six of the seven Florida districts close; Orange County (Orlando) is open. In Maryland, Montgomery County and Baltimore County are open, and Prince George's County is closed for conferences. Both North Carolina districts, Wake County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, are closed.

Two rows need a second look. Chicago moved its Veterans Day holiday to Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, and uses November 11 for teacher training, so there is still no school. Hillsborough County lists November 11 as a tentative hurricane make-up day: if the district has to make up storm days, it could become a school day. Check the district's site before Wednesday.

Is Veterans Day a school holiday? Why districts differ

Veterans Day is one of the 11 legal public holidays in federal law, fixed on November 11 (5 U.S.C. 6103), and the Office of Personnel Management lists Wednesday, November 11 as the 2026 holiday for federal employees. That law covers federal workers; school calendars are set by states and local school boards.

A few states decide for their schools. North Carolina's school calendar law (G.S. 115C-84.2) makes Veterans Day a holiday for all public school staff and students, which is why both North Carolina districts in our table are closed. We did not check the law in every state, so read the rest of this section as general.

In most places it is a local choice. A school board has to fit instruction days, training days and breaks into one calendar, and every holiday it takes is a school day added somewhere else. Some districts close and name the day Veterans Day. Some keep school open and hold an assembly or a lesson about veterans instead. For parents of a closed district the result is the same whatever the reason: no school, and a day to cover.

A Wednesday off when your office is open

This is the hard part of Veterans Day for two working parents. School districts are local government, and local government mostly takes the day. Private employers mostly don't. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics count of paid holidays (March 2018), 11 percent of private industry workers with paid holidays got Veterans Day, against 70 percent of state and local government workers. So in most families with a school closed on November 11, both parents are expected at work.

Ways to cover it, roughly in the order to try them:

• The parent who is off. If one of you works for a federal agency, you most likely have the day off. Many state and city employees do too. Check your own employer's holiday list before you plan around it, because shift and essential jobs often work.

• Ask the other employer. If neither of you is off, ask whether a floating holiday or one personal day can go on November 11.

• A Wednesday swap. On a hybrid schedule, move your office day away from Wednesday that week, or swap a shift with a colleague. With a young child at home, working from home is a half day at best.

• A half day each. One parent works early and hands over at noon, the other takes the afternoon and works late. Each of you gives up half a day instead of one of you losing a whole one.

• A school's-out day camp. City recreation departments, YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs, museums and some gyms often run one-day camps on school holidays, including federal ones. We did not check any camp, so ask whether yours runs on November 11, and book by the weekend.

• Trade with another family. One parent takes both families' kids on Veterans Day; the other family takes them on the next teacher workday.

Whatever you pick, decide it once and write it down. If you already have a rule for who stays home when a kid is sick, the same rule can cover single days off like this one.

What to do this week

1. Check your district today. Use the table above, then your school's own newsletter or calendar, since a school can add a day the district calendar leaves out.

2. Put it on the shared calendar today, as an all-day event both of you can see: "No school, Veterans Day."

3. Put one name on the day. Not "we'll see," and not "both of us." Write the name in the event title, like "No school: Dad has the kids."

4. Book any camp by the weekend and put the drop-off and pickup times on the same event.

5. Look ahead. Thanksgiving break is two weeks later. Our Thanksgiving break 2026 dates cover the week of November 23 to 27, and our school calendar study for working parents counts the rest of the year's days off.

If the same parent always takes these days, our free game Who does it? shows how differently the two of you see who does what at home.

Where Zazu helps

A day off like this usually shows up as one line in a school email a week or two ahead. Zazu, the AI family assistant for working parents, lives in iMessage and WhatsApp, with no app to download. With your permission it reads the family's email and calendars, Google or Microsoft 365, and speaks up first: when the school email mentions no school on November 11, it tells both parents, asks who covers the day, and offers to add the answer to the calendar. It always asks before it acts. Nothing to pay for 7 days. Then $19 a month. Cancel anytime: just send STOP.

How we checked: on November 5, 2026 we took Wednesday, November 11 and the rest of that week from our dataset of the 30 largest districts' official 2026-27 calendars, read day by day on October 4, 2026 (download the dataset). "Closed for all students" and the reason come from each calendar's own wording. The holiday dates come from the Office of Personnel Management's 2026 schedule, the paid-holiday figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the North Carolina rule from the state's General Statutes. The ways to cover the day are ours, not research findings. Districts can change their calendars, so check yours before you plan. Spot a mistake? Email hello@getzazu.io.