MANKATO — The Mankato school district is planning adjustments to the 2025-2026 school year calendar in order to add more time in the summer of 2026 for bond and HVAC construction projects.
Director of Teaching and Learning Travis Olson, who leads the district’s calendar committee, shared the plans with the School Board Monday evening.
“We’ve learned through time that getting down to the final few days is not a good spot to be in,” he said.
“To be proactive to that as much as possible, conversations started around how we might change our calendar.”
The district is currently proposing to add eight additional days to the summer of 2026. To achieve this, the school year will start one week earlier, the week of Aug. 25, and three previously scheduled non-school days will now be instructional days, according to a board packet.
The school year would also then end sooner, on May 22, 2026.
“This is atypical for us. We tend to adopt a calendar for two years January-ish, and so the timeline isn’t that far off. What is very different though is our families were planning on a calendar that we adopted about a year ago,” Olson said.
Several construction projects are planned over the next couple of years, including the last of the secure entrances for the construction project that voters approved with the district’s latest bond referendum and Mankato West High School’s remodeling.
Among the many upgrades, when completed, West visitors will enter through the ground floor of a new three-story administration/classroom addition between the current front entrance and parking lot. When arriving for activities in a new gymnasium, they will walk down a hallway, past the old gym that takes on a new life as a four-station music facility.
The current administration offices, located in the center of the second floor, will be converted into two art rooms. Classrooms above the new administration offices will be designed for easier inter-disciplinary collaboration and group work.
Board Member Erin Roberts asked staff Monday to explain their timeline in considering the new calendar.
“Another one that I think we keep hearing or what I keep hearing is, you guys have known about this for so long, and now you’re telling us now. Can you maybe just tell the greater public how long you’ve actually known about this?” she said.
Director of Business Services Amanda Heilman answered.
She said the group learned Kennedy and Hoover needed fire suppression work due to adding square footage for secure entrances.
Additional HVAC work was needed regarding dehumidifying the buildings and that added time.
Supt. Paul Peterson acknowledged that some of the district’s students participate in activities like 4-H during the end of summer.
“We would work with all of those programs to make sure that kids could participate in and do all the different things that they do with their typical summer,” he told The Free Press before Monday’s meeting.
The proposed calendar has not yet been formally adopted.