The 2026/2027 school year will start later than usual at Oak Park and River Forest High School.
On Aug. 21 the OPRF District 200 Board of Education voted 5 to 2 to change the school’s calendar for next year in an effort to make sure all the learning spaces in the school are ready after the district’s Project 2 construction project ends next summer.
The first day of school next year will be Aug. 24 for freshmen and Aug. 25 for the other OPRF students. This year the first day of school was Aug. 12 for freshmen and Aug. 13 for other OPRF students.
The biggest change with the new schedule will be that first semester final exams will occur in January instead of before the winter break. The first semester has ended before the Winter Break since the 2012-13 school year. The 2026-27 school year will end June 9, 2027.
Board members Graham Brisben, Tim Brandhorst, Jonathan Livingston, Kathleen Odell and school board president Audrey Williams-Lee voted in favor of the change. Voting against were Fred Arkin and Josh Gertz.
“This is an acceptable one year solution,” Odell said.
Two parents of OPRF students were on hand at the meeting to urge the board not to change the calendar, saying that having first semester finals after the winter break will add stress and anxiety to students’ lives and interfere with their ability to enjoy the break. They were disappointed with the board’s vote.
“I think it’s shortsighted,” said OPRF parent Divya Variyam. “I have children who will be studying over that break and it will not be a break.”
Administrators and School Board members who voted for the change said teachers will be instructed to assign no work over the winter break, and students will be told they don’t need to do any studying or school work over the break and should have a “pencils down” approach.
“We expect you to rest,” will be the message, Brandhorst said.
But parent Amy Guralnick said that won’t work.
“Anybody who has any sense of consequence knows that it’s nearly impossible to actually take time and relax when there’s something looming, so they can tell the kids not to study all they want but those kids are going to want to study or, at the very least, not study and stress about not studying,” Guraknick said.
Administrators pointed out that the first semester in the 2026-27 school year will end January 21 and the Winter Break will end Jan. 2, giving students ample time to get back up to speed after returning to school after the break.
Arkin and Gertz were also concerned about potential stress of having finals after the break. Arkin said by starting the school year later, students taking Advanced Placement classes would have less time to prepare for AP exams, because the College Board sets the schedule for AP Exams.
“Our AP kids will be losing preparation time for those tests,” Arkin said at the Aug. 7 Committee of the Whole meeting where the adjusted school calendar was first discussed.
Arkin said he was influenced by a letter written by a student opposing the change in schedule. He also said that since the area of the school being renovated is mostly geared toward physical education, he didn’t understand why last minute preparations to that area should affect the rest of the school. Last year and this year OPRF has been functioning fine while the southeast corner of the building is under construction although many physical education classes have been moved outdoors.
At the Aug. 7 meeting, OPRF history teacher Toni Biasiello, a member of the calendar committee that came up with the recommendation, told the school board she has taught under both schedules and kids will adapt. Biasiello said having finals after the break might be better for some students because if they fall behind it will give them some time to catch up. Biasiello also said December is typically a very busy month for students with concerts and holiday preparations and it might even be better to have finals in January, a less busy month.
“We used to have a schedule like this for decades,” Biasiello said. “We made it work. It was fine.”
Arkin said he wasn’t convinced any disruption in preparing the renovated portion of the building would be significant enough to delay the start of school. Gertz said that he thought there could be another solution to the problem of perhaps not having the entire school ready for the first day of school.
But Williams-Lee said she preferred to rely on the recommendation of the administration.
“I don’t know how to run a high school,” Williams-Lee said. “I do trust the team.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
