U.S. federal holidays on the school calendar

The eleven federal holidays

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management publishes the canonical list each year. The dates below are the observed dates for the next several school years — what most public-school districts and universities recognize as closed days.

How holidays show up on PlannerGrid templates

On every academic-year and semester calendar, federal holidays are blocked out as non-instructional days. They are visually distinct from school-specific breaks (winter break, spring break, professional development days) so you can tell at a glance whether a date is closed because the federal government says so or because your district scheduled a development day.

On weekly and daily teacher and student planners, the holiday is printed at the top of the affected day, with a thin rule across the day's planning blocks indicating no instruction. On lesson-plan templates, the holiday displaces the lesson block so a week containing Veterans Day prints with four planning columns instead of five.

What PlannerGrid does not include

State holidays, religious observances, and district-specific in-service days are not overlaid by default — those vary too much from one school system to the next. Where a calendar is built for a specific district (in the District & University Calendars category), the district's published in-service days, parent-teacher conferences, and break weeks are included from the district's official academic calendar.

Why federal holidays matter for school planning

Even when a school district doesn't formally close for a federal holiday, instructional plans usually shift. Many districts move parent conferences, professional-development days, and standardized-testing windows to align with federal holidays so families and staff don't lose a regular weekend. Building the federal calendar into every PlannerGrid template means you can plan a unit, a week, or a year without checking three other calendars first.