Marfa ISD will be returning to a five-day calendar for the 2026-2027 school year. The new school calendar was approved at last week’s board meeting and marks a change from the four-day calendar the last three years.
Marfa ISD first began their four-day school calendar in the fall of 2023. As reported in 2024 by Big Bend Sentinel, when the School Board initially voted to implement the alternative schedule, it was believed that this change could attract more families and address the district’s declining enrollment. At the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, the district had 269 students enrolled. However, by the end of that year, enrollment had decreased to 233 students.
Marfa schools currently have an enrollment of 185 students on campus, although the district has added 159 students with its early childhood education partnerships for a total of 344.
“There are some nonnegotiables that need to be in the calendar for next year,” said Interim Superintendent Arturo Alferez when presenting the potential new five-day calendar to the board.
“One of them is instructional days, and the reason for it is just because we are under school improvement, and because of school improvement, we have to amp up our instructional days to 175. With that said, without having a DOI designation, we can’t start school until August 24. Working with the admin, we provided our staff with two calendars and this is the one that has been proposed.”
Texas Education Agency’s School Improvement Division intervenes with campuses and districts that earn a D or F through the State Accountability System. When a district earns a D or F for three consecutive years, districts lose their District of Innovation (DOI) status and must work with the School Improvement Division to develop a School Improvement Plan. As previously reported, Marfa ISD earned an overall “D” rating in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
The new calendar, according to Alferez, starts August 24 and ends May 28, 2027. By adopting this calendar, the district increases the instructional minutes from the state required 75,600 to 77,525.
With instructional minutes spread out over more days in the school year, the school can shave off time in the mornings and afternoons.
“So we’re looking at a bell schedule coming in at 8, 8:05 in the morning, and ending school at 3:45 for everybody,” Alferez said. He later clarified that the bell schedule is for the junior high/high school campus; the elementary schedule will end at 3:15 p.m. Junior high and high school students currently attend school from 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The other calendar option offered to teachers maintained a four-day school week but didn’t end until well into June and continued the long days. “The teachers got to see two options and the majority of teachers voted for this one.” Alferez said.
Board Member Teresa Nunez questioned how teachers feel about going back to a five-day work week.
Elementary School Principal Rosie Martinez suggested that a return to a five-day week would be easier for those teaching Bluebonnet Learning, the curriculum developed by TEA that Marfa ISD implemented this school year. Bluebonnet utilizes detailed, structured lesson plans in each classroom. “I think we did a really good job of letting the teachers know that because we are in the School Improvement Plan, we could possibly go to a five-day work week,” she said. “For the teachers teaching Bluebonnet, looking at a five-day week is comforting for them.”
Athletic Director and Dean of Students Linda Ojeda added, “The other thing that they did say, was that they were happy about not leaving at 5 o’clock.”
Before a vote was taken, Nunez expressed the need to promote the revised calendar to the school community, specifically parents and guardians, and encourage everyone to take ownership of pulling the district out of school improvement.
“Going forward with this calendar, I really think we really need to push it out early to the parents and make the community understand, or at least the parents understand, why we’re going from four days to five days and say it’s all about the grades. It really is,” Nunez said. “We need to get the community’s involvement in and make the parents understand how important it is to get your kids to school, to sit there and get the education … It takes the moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas to get these kids to school on time to make them understand how important it is and why we’re in the position we’re in.”
She continued, “So we really need to push this out and get it out early so that way they’re already prepared and have this idea for next year—we’re going five days now.”
The motion to accept the new calendar passed unanimously.