United States school holidays — how the dates actually work

There is no single national table of United States school holidays, and any site showing one is guessing. Here is who really sets the dates, the shape of a typical year, and how to get a calendar you can trust.

Who sets the dates

School calendars are adopted by each local school district — around 13,000 of them — within rules their state sets, such as a minimum number of instruction days.
That is why two towns in the same state can start summer a week apart, and why any site listing one national table of US school holidays is making it up.
Private schools set their own calendars entirely.

The typical rhythm

These are patterns, not official dates — the whole point of this page is that the exact dates are local:

Typical school-year rhythm in the United States
Period	Typical pattern
School year	Starts between early August (common in the South) and just after Labor Day (common in the Northeast); ends late May to late June.
Thanksgiving	At least Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving week off; many districts take the whole week.
Winter break	Around two weeks over Christmas and New Year.
Spring break	One week, usually in March or April; timing varies widely by district.
Summer break	Roughly ten to eleven weeks between the school years.

Where the official dates live

Your district publishes the adopted calendar on its own website, usually as "academic calendar" or "district calendar" — that is the only authoritative source, including makeup days for weather closures.

What to print

The school-year calendar puts August to July on one page — print it, pencil in your own district's dates, and it works for any school. The calendar maker can mark United States public holidays on it, in either Letter or A4, free and without a watermark.

Countries with official national dates

Fourteen countries do publish school-break dates centrally, and for those the exact dates are on this site, region by region: