So as you probably have noticed, the schedule for this school year has been anything but normal, and for good reason. Due to the state of the pandemic, a lot of decisions have been made on the fly, including changes to class time, restrictions to in person classes, and the start date for the 2020-2021 school year. But as vaccines get distributed and become more widespread, Holyoke Public Schools started preparing for their next school year, 2021-2022, (Or just the 2021 school year for short). The 2021 schedule has already been revealed, and it’s something that Freshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors should be aware of. So today I’ll be comparing the HPS 2021 schedule with our current one, as well as the schedules from two previous years. 

First things first, let’s talk about starting dates. Our current school year, or the 2020 school year, started quite late due to the pandemic. The original plan was to start the year in the first or second week of September, but was pushed back to the third week, on September 14th. Normally, the HPS school year starts in the last week of August, as that’s how it was for 2018, and 2019. But the 2021 school year doesn’t follow either of these patterns, as currently it’s set for the second to last week of August. Now this doesn’t seem like that big of a change, but it is when you consider the previous school years. 

For grades 1-12, the 2019 school year started on August 27th, while the 2018 school year started on August 28th, both taking place on the last Tuesday of August. The 2021 school year however, is set to take place on August 23rd, four to five days earlier than the previous two years I just mentioned. Now this has been a bit concerning for some students and staff, as it feels like the starting date for school just keeps getting earlier and earlier. But more than that, this change may be extra difficult for students to handle, due to how our current school year’s schedule is going. 

As I said earlier, the 2020 school year started pretty late, and because of that, the school year will end pretty late too. While the 2019 school year ended on June 16th, for non Seniors our current school year is set to end on June 28th. While this end date for the late start seems fair, it doesn’t take into account when the next school year starts, that being on August 23rd. To put this into perspective, the summer break last year was 79 days long, while the current summer break for this year is only 55. That’s over two weeks shorter from what it was last year. 

Now I’m not saying that our summer break should always be 79 days, because really, that only happened due to delays from the pandemic in 2020. But this is still something that everyone should be aware of. HPS Students, especially Freshmen, may have gotten used to the late start we had last year. But now, they suddenly have to jump from having well over 2 months of vacation, to losing nearly a third of that time. For those graduating this year, this won’t really affect you much, but for everyone else, it’s important to remember the following; Our current school year officially ends June 28th, the next school year starts August 23rd, and the length of this year’s summer break is only 55 days long.