State College will lengthen school days to avoid adding to 2025-26 calendar
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- State College schools will add five minutes to their days for the rest of the year.
- The move comes after the district has already called for four snow days this year.
- The 2025-26 academic year will end with a half-day for students on June 5.
The State College Area School District will lengthen its remaining school days to avoid adding another day to its academic calendar.
Starting Monday, March 30, the district will add five minutes to each school day for the remainder of the 2025-26 school year, Superintendent Curtis Johnson said in a letter to families. The plan arrives after State College’s district used its fourth snow day of the year on March 17, which would ordinarily require it to begin adding days to the end of its school year to meet state education requirements.
Once slightly longer school days take effect, State College’s elementary buildings will be in session from 8:10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m. Secondary buildings will run their school days from 8:40 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
The final day of State College’s 2025-26 academic year will remain a half-day on Friday, June 5.
“For families who have already made plans for the summer, we sought to avoid moving the last day of school into a new week,” Johnson wrote in a message to families.
Johnson said principals will contact families to share how lengthened school days will impact each building across the district.
State College’s district called for snow days on Dec. 2, Jan. 2 and March 3. The district canceled the school day for a fourth time last week, when snow accumulation resulted in poor road conditions across Centre County.
Snow days are not built into State College’s academic calendars. If the district called three or fewer snow days in a single academic year, only staff would need to make them up as contractual Act 80 days. Four or more snow days requires the district to add additional instructional days or modified instructional times for K-11 students.
Pennsylvania’s public schools are required to provide at least 180 days of instruction for students, according to new guidelines that took effect with the 2023-24 school year. Districts can take more flexible approaches by choosing to provide 450 hours of instruction for half-time pre-K and kindergarten students, 900 hours of instruction for full-time pre-K, kindergarten and elementary students (grades 1-6) and 990 hours of instruction for secondary students (grades 7-12).
Instructional time, including the five minutes added to State College’s remaining school days, cannot include activities like student lunches, recess periods and transportation to and from buildings.
State College’s district employed a similar plan to add time to its school days in 2016, when severe flooding at Park Forest Middle School closed the building for days. The middle school added time to the end of its school days to avoid adding additional days for students at the end of the school year.
This story was originally published March 25, 2026 at 11:09 AM.
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