A northern Virginia school district wants to help its elementary students get ahead. So it’s letting them out of school early about once per month starting this academic year.
It may seem counterintuitive on the surface, but district leaders in the Fairfax County school system hope that by dismissing students early on these designated Mondays and repurposing that time for teacher prep and planning, teachers can feel—and be—better prepared, leading to better instruction and outcomes for students.
Beginning this fall, students in the district’s 141 elementary schools will be released three hours early on seven Mondays, roughly one per month. (There will be no early release days in December and January.) During those three hours, teachers will continue working, both individually and in collaboration. The first early release day will happen Sept. 16 at one set of elementary schools and Sept. 23 at the other.
“Because the time we have with our children is so precious, we just have to make the most of it,” Fairfax Superintendent Michelle Reid said. “Planning is probably the most important part of the instructional cycle, so if we can improve our planning, I think the delivery and the outcomes of our children improve.”
Providing adequate teacher planning time has been a perennial challenge in education, and teachers have felt increasingly stretched for time in recent years as schools face demands to boost students’ academic performance. At the same time, the benefits of sufficient time to plan—as well as the continued need—are well documented.
One report by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2023 suggested that as teachers increasingly struggle with burnout since the pandemic, tasked with helping students make swift strides in their academic recovery, carving out more time for them to plan, prepare, and participate in professional development “may support higher-quality instruction, with the important added benefit of reducing stress on teachers.”
Teachers—particularly teachers of color—regularly cite increased planning time as a factor that would boost morale and retention.
Yet, on average, teachers have less than one hour per day for planning, according to NCTQ surveys. Often, elementary school teachers receive less planning time than middle and high school teachers, according to the survey.
That’s a problem, said Mahri Aste, a principal in the district and an officer of the Fairfax Association of Elementary School Principals, because elementary school teachers have to prepare for several subjects each day, and it is incredibly difficult to do so in less than an hour.
“We knew there was a huge need for this,” she said.
The new early release initiative in Fairfax County aims to provide some individual teacher planning time once per month, but also time for collaborative planning with other educators in the building, and time to complete state-mandated professional development on literacy instruction under the 2022 Virginia Literacy Act, which requires that schools adopt evidence-based literacy instruction.
Other Virginia districts are taking different approaches to carve out the additional training time. In Loudoun County, also in northern Virginia, the district has added four full days off for students that teachers will use for professional development, after dropping an earlier proposal to add 16 delayed-start days, the Washington Post reported.
In Fairfax County, the planning, collaboration, and professional development are a lot to pack into three hours, but it’s also three hours that weren’t previously available for the work that needs to be done either way, Aste said.
The additional time off will not affect the district’s ability to provide the state-mandated minimum number of instructional hours. The time will come out of the snow days already built into the school calendar, according to the district.
“When we’ve spoken to elementary teachers, they’re very positive about this,” Aste said. “They always want more and they need more, but this is a great start in getting some of that much needed elementary teacher planning time.”
The district is leveraging partnerships to provide child care
School and district leaders in Fairfax County have been developing this initiative for several years, in part because it poses logistical challenges for families who can’t pick their children up early or provide supervision.
To address those concerns, the district has established partnerships with local organizations—including Boys and Girls clubs, Girl and Boy Scouts, STEM groups, and others—to help provide supervision and programs for students at the schools, and central office staff members will also help care for students while teachers work.
Normal school bus transportation will be provided, with routes running both at the early dismissal time and again at normal dismissal time for the first two months of early release days. The district plans to reevaluate transportation arrangements after that to determine if the additional bus runs are necessary.
During the planning process, the district held two community events and sent surveys to parents asking about their transportation and child care needs, and it plans to review the setup periodically throughout the school year and make adjustments as needed.
There’s also a dedicated email address that families can use to voice concerns or request help for challenges they’re facing related to the early dismissals. Members of a committee of school and district leaders leading the initiative monitor the email, Aste said.
“A lot of times, systems and leaders are reluctant to risk not having a perfect rollout of a new initiative, so we often don’t roll anything out that might be supportive,” Reid said. “We know there will be issues that come up—there will be challenges we anticipate and some we might not, and we’ll work through it because we know it’s right for our students and staff.”
The early release initiative aims to support new teachers
Aste said she hopes that the effort to provide additional planning time will give elementary school teachers a morale boost, and show them their work is valued and appreciated. And, hopefully, in turn, more will stay in their elementary roles, rather than leaving to pursue jobs in middle or high schools—where they traditionally have had more planning time.
It could also help early-career teachers adjust to the profession and those new to the district become more familiar with its practices and their colleagues, Aste said.
Ultimately, the initiative is the product of school leaders’ advocacy, Reid said, and it’s important for other district leaders to listen to what their staff is telling them they need, even when it may seem difficult to accommodate.
“There’s been a lot added to the plate of our teachers and our principals over the last several years,” Reid said, “and when we have continuing and increasing high expectations, we have to provide high support.”
