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Academic Year · August → July
PlannerGrid · District & University Calendars · Year-at-a-glance

Chicago Public Schools — Academic-Year Calendar

A printable academic-year calendar built to the published pattern of Chicago Public Schools — typical first day in late August, last day in mid-June, with standard breaks and U.S. federal holidays overlaid.

Audience: K-12 families and teachers in this district Layout: Year-at-a-glance Cycle: August → July Updated: 2025-08-01
Chicago Public SchoolsK-12 districtYear at a glance
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Sized for US Letter. Choose "Background graphics" off for the cleanest result.

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About the Chicago Public Schools calendar

This is a printable academic-year calendar built to the published pattern of Chicago Public Schools. Includes Casimir Pulaski Day in early March, an Illinois state observance. The calendar uses the system's typical first day in late August and typical last day in mid-June, with the standard pattern of breaks overlaid on a single printable page.

It is intended for families inside the Chicago Public Schools system, for teachers planning units against the system's published calendar, and for anyone moving into the area who wants to see at a glance how the school year breaks down. PlannerGrid does not publish a substitute for the official calendar — always confirm specific dates against the system's own published academic calendar — but the typical pattern below is the long-running shape of the school district's year.

What the calendar shows

The single-page calendar lays out the typical Chicago Public Schools school year using the August-to-July school cycle.

  • Typical first day of school: late August
  • Typical last day of school: mid-June
  • Standard breaks observed by the system: Thanksgiving (3 days), winter break, MLK Day, Pulaski Day, spring break, Memorial Day
  • U.S. federal holidays plotted from the OPM list
  • Notation strips for in-service days, professional development, and parent-conference dates that you fill in once with pen
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Why a system-specific calendar matters

Generic academic-year calendars miss the specifics that matter most: the day a particular district closes for fall break, the week a university reads for finals, the local observance that adds a non-instructional day. Chicago Public Schools has its own pattern of Thanksgiving (3 days), winter break, MLK Day, Pulaski Day, spring break, Memorial Day on top of the federal holidays. Building a calendar around the published pattern means a family or teacher can plan travel, child care, college visits, and unit pacing without flipping back and forth between three different documents.

How families use this template

Print one copy at the start of the school year and pin it where the family meets in the morning — the kitchen, the entryway, or the back of the front door. Walk through the year with a pencil and write in the specific dates from the Chicago Public Schools official calendar — early-release Wednesdays, parent-conference days, picture days, school-spirit weeks, district-specific in-service days. By the time the year starts the calendar is fully populated and the rest of the year is reading off the page rather than hunting for dates.

Teachers in the Chicago Public Schools system use the same printable calendar as the cover page of their planning binder. Department leads find it useful at the August faculty meeting — every member of the team starts with the same calendar in front of them, and the long-range planning conversation can begin without a fifteen-minute hunt for the official calendar PDF.

Holidays and observances on this calendar

Federal holidays from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management list are overlaid on every page. Chicago Public Schools's typical district- or campus-specific breaks (Thanksgiving (3 days), winter break, MLK Day, Pulaski Day, spring break, Memorial Day) are pre-marked from the long-running pattern. The dates of in-service days, professional development, parent-teacher conference weeks, and any picture days, school-spirit weeks, or graduation ceremonies vary year to year and are left blank — they should be filled in from the system's official calendar each August.

Print and binder tips

Print one copy on standard 20-lb paper and use it as a working surface for the year; print a second copy on heavier paper and laminate it for use as a kitchen wall calendar. The calendar prints to the same dimensions as every other PlannerGrid template, so families using a PlannerGrid weekly planner alongside this Chicago Public Schools year-overview see the year and the week at the same scale.

Pairs well with

These printable templates from PlannerGrid are commonly used alongside the Chicago Public Schools — Academic-Year Calendar. Open any of them, print together, and clip into the same binder.

About PlannerGrid templates

Every template on PlannerGrid is built for the U.S. school calendar — an August-to-July cycle that lines up with how teachers, students, and homeschool families actually plan their year. We overlay U.S. federal holidays from the Office of Personnel Management list so school breaks and observed days never collide with planned instruction. The grid is the same across every page so you can print, hole-punch, and mix layouts in one binder.

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