Dear HPS Families, Colleagues, and Community,
Thank you for all you do every day to ensure all our students enjoy abundant opportunities to achieve success.
I am writing to you with an important update on our new bell times for the upcoming academic year 2025-2026. Most importantly, for all Hartford Public Schools the school day will end 30 minutes earlier than our current school year.
On December 17, 2024, the Hartford Board of Education approved a three-year contract for teachers with significant improvements in compensation, a shorter work day, and incentives to improve our ability to recruit and keep highly qualified educators. The contract includes a 30-minute decrease in our school day. This makes our length of school day similar to surrounding districts.
In February, HPS shared a survey with families, students, and staff in order to better understand community needs around this change. We are thankful to the more than 2,000 HPS community members who shared their input as we crafted a new school schedule. The feedback from families, students, and staff was heavily in favor of ending the school day earlier rather than starting later.
Because we needed to coordinate the change in the end of the school day with multiple transportation providers, some of them managed by the State and not the Hartford Public Schools, it was not possible to announce the final decision until today. This time allowed us to work toward ensuring all transportation providers will be able to meet the schedule of the earlier end to the day.
The start time for your school will remain unchanged for next year and the end time will be 30 minutes earlier than this year. To find the specific start and end times for your school, you can refer to this chart by school:
See the new Bell Times for the 2025-2026 school year here.
If you have any further questions or concerns on the update school bell times, please reach out to your school principal or the Welcome Center for assistance.
In Partnership,
Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez