The Maine Agenda › Live in Maine

School Calendars by District in Greater Portland, Maine: Every 2026-27 First Day, Verified

Published August 1, 2026 · Updated August 10, 2026 · 14 min read

There is no such thing as the first day of school in Greater Portland. Twelve school departments spread their first days across six calendar days, from August 26 to September 3, and in most of them your own two children will not start on the same morning.

That is not a scheduling quirk. It is what happens when twelve independently governed school departments each adopt their own calendar in February, publish it in whatever format their website vendor allows, and never compare notes. A family with a fifth grader in Falmouth and a tenth grader in Falmouth has two different first days. A family that moved from Gorham to Yarmouth over the summer has a start date six days later than the one they planned around.

We read all twelve district calendars against the districts' own published documents. All twelve are now verified.

Correction, August 10, 2026. The first version of this article, published August 1, said two districts had adopted a 2026-27 calendar that could not be read: Cape Elizabeth and Westbrook. The headline said so. That was wrong, and the mistake was ours rather than the districts'. Both publish their 2026-27 first days on their own sites, and both render only in a browser that runs JavaScript and displays images. We had checked them with a client that does neither, and then reported our own access limit as a publishing failure. Westbrook's full 2026-27 calendar is on its School Calendar page as an image, which is why text extraction came back empty; its first days were also posted as plain text by the superintendent on August 4. Cape Elizabeth's are on the district's live events calendar. Both are below, and the section that described them has been rewritten. The general lesson is the same one this site keeps relearning: an absence is only real if you looked with a tool capable of seeing the thing.

The short answer

Gorham starts first, on Wednesday, August 26, 2026. Grades 6 and 9 and PreK go in that day, the rest of the district the following morning.

Yarmouth starts last, on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, and it is the only district in the region that appears to bring every student in on the same day.

Everyone else lands on Monday, August 31, or splits across August 31 and September 1. But "everyone else starts August 31" is a sentence that will send somebody's kid to a closed building, because who starts on August 31 differs sharply by district.

First day of school, 2026-27, by district

Gorham School Department. August 26 for grades 6, 9 and PreK. August 27 for grades 1 through 5, 7 through 8, and 10 through 12. September 1 for kindergarten. Staff inservice August 24 and 25. Adopted February 11, 2026.

Portland Public Schools. August 31 is the "First Day of School for Grades 1-12." September 1 is the "First Day for Pre-K and K." The calendar's own footer reads "CALENDAR LAST UPDATED MARCH 31, 2026," the latest revision date of any district in the region.

South Portland School Department. August 31 for grades 1 through 12. September 1 for kindergarten, with an early release that day. September 2 for PreK.

Scarborough Public Schools. The most staggered start in the region. August 31 is a student day for grades 6 and 9 only, with K through 5 by appointment. September 1 adds grades 6 through 12, K through 5 still by appointment. Grades K through 12 are all in on September 2. If you have a Scarborough second grader, your first real day is September 2, not August 31.

Falmouth Public Schools. August 31 for grades 1 through 5, grade 6, and grade 9. September 1 for kindergarten, grades 7 and 8, and grades 10 through 12. September 2 for Pre-K. Approved March 18, 2026.

MSAD 51 (Cumberland and North Yarmouth). August 31 for grades 1 through 9, with grade 9 orientation the same day. September 1 for grades 10 through 12. September 2 for kindergarten. September 3 for Pre-K. Kindergarten orientation is still listed as TBD. Adopted March 5, 2026.

RSU 5 (Freeport, Durham, Pownal). August 31 for PreK through grade 9. September 1 for all students PreK through 12. Note the district also closes both September 4 and September 7 around Labor Day, which is unusual in the region. Adopted January 28, 2026, the earliest adoption of the twelve.

RSU 14 (Windham and Raymond). August 31 for grades 1 through 9. September 1 for grades 10 through 12. PreK and kindergarten come in half a class at a time on September 2 and September 3, with schools contacting families individually about which day. September 4 is also closed. Adopted February 25, 2026.

Brunswick School Department. August 31 for the transition grades only: PreK, kindergarten, grade 3, grade 6 and grade 9. September 1 for all students.

Yarmouth School Department. "The year begins with the first day for students on Tuesday, September 1." No grade-level split is stated anywhere in the announcement.

Cape Elizabeth School Department. August 27 for grades 5 and 9, and it is a half day. August 31 for grades 1 through 12. Board-approved February 10, 2026.

Westbrook School Department. August 31 for grades 1 through 12. September 2 for kindergarten at Canal, Congin and Saccarappa, and that day is an early release. September 3 for PreK at Canal.

The two districts that hide in plain sight

These are the two that no aggregator gets from the source, because getting them from the source requires opening a browser.

Cape Elizabeth publishes its first days on the district's own events calendar at cape.k12.me.us, as two dated entries: "gr 5 & 9 Students' First Day," annotated half day, on August 27, and "Students' First Day (gr 1-12)" on August 31. School offices reopen August 17. Bringing grade 5 and grade 9 in on their own, for half a day, before anyone else arrives is the most deliberate transition-year handling in the region: those are the two years a Cape Elizabeth student changes buildings. There is also a naming trap worth knowing. The domain that sounds right, capeelizabethschools.org, is not the school department. The district runs on cape.k12.me.us.

Westbrook publishes twice, and neither copy is machine-readable. The full 2026-27 calendar sits on the district's School Calendar page as a scanned image, so a text scraper reads that page as empty even though a human sees the whole year. Separately, the superintendent posted the dates as plain text on August 4, 2026: offices reopen August 13, grades 1 through 12 start Monday, August 31, kindergarten at Canal, Congin and Saccarappa starts Wednesday, September 2 on an early release day, PreK at Canal starts Thursday, September 3, and there is no school Friday, September 4 or Monday, September 7 for Labor Day weekend. The two sources agree. Westbrook is one of three districts here that close the Friday before Labor Day as well as the Monday, with RSU 5 and RSU 14, so a family straddling Westbrook and Portland gets a four-day weekend on one side of the house and a three-day weekend on the other.

One thing worth reporting against ourselves. Third-party school-calendar sites publish a Westbrook 2026-27 calendar with specific dates that are not sourced to Westbrook: a February 15 to 19 vacation, an April 19 to 23 break, a June 15 half day, a June 5 graduation. We flagged those as pattern-matching. Having now read the actual calendar, all four are correct. February 15 to 19 is vacation, April 19 to 23 is vacation, June 15 is the half-day last day of school, and the calendar prints "Graduation June 5, 2027." The caution still stands and it is narrower than we made it: those sites were right here, and being right without a source is a thing you cannot check in advance. If a date matters, Westbrook is (207) 854-0800 and Cape Elizabeth is (207) 799-2217.

Two more documentation problems worth flagging, both harmless but both capable of costing you an afternoon:

• South Portland's current calendar lives on its Calendar page, but the district's Documents section, which is where most people look for a printable PDF, contains exactly one file: a 2023-24 calendar. Three years stale, and it is the only thing in the folder.
• Brunswick's file is named "Approved_2026-27_School_Calendar.pdf" and stamped "Adopted 2/11/2026," but the header inside the document still reads "DRAFT 2026-2027 CALENDAR." The word was never removed. Treat it as adopted; the filename and the adoption stamp both say so.

Last day of school, and why you cannot compare these numbers

Every published last day in this region is conditional, and the conditions are not the same, so putting them in a column next to each other produces a comparison that means nothing.

Ten districts publish a zero-snow-day last day and add days on from there. Portland is June 11, 2027, explicitly labeled "Tentative," with make-up days June 14 through 16. South Portland is June 10 and enumerates each contingency out loud: June 11 with one snow day, June 14 with two, June 15 with three, June 16 with four, June 17 with five. Yarmouth is June 11, adding one day per closure until June 17, after which additional days go remote. RSU 14 is June 11. Scarborough and Falmouth both publish two dates, June 14 with no storm days used and June 17 with three; Scarborough adds that anything past three storm days becomes asynchronous rather than extending the year. RSU 5 is a June 14 half day with make-up days running to June 22. Brunswick is a June 14 half day. MSAD 51 splits by grade: June 11 for Pre-K, June 14 for K through 8, June 15 for 9 through 12, with the first two storm days made up at the end and everything after that going remote.

Gorham is the exception, and it inverts the whole comparison. Its last student day is June 15 with five storm days already built in. So Portland's June 11 is a floor that moves later all winter, and Gorham's June 15 is a ceiling that moves earlier if the winter is mild. Read side by side they look like a four-day difference. They are not the same kind of number at all.

February and April vacation are more uniform than they look

Every regional summary we found treats vacation weeks as varying by district. Read the actual calendars and they do not. What varies is the labeling.

Scarborough lists its February vacation as February 13 to 21. Portland lists February 16 to 19. That looks like Scarborough gets nearly twice as much time off. It does not. February 13 is a Saturday and February 21 is a Sunday; Scarborough is simply listing the weekend bookends. Portland lists only the four school days it closes and counts Presidents' Day, Monday February 15, separately as a holiday. Both districts are closed the same five school days. So are South Portland, Falmouth, MSAD 51, RSU 5, RSU 14, Gorham and Brunswick. February vacation in Greater Portland is the week of Monday, February 15, 2027, everywhere that publishes one.

April is nearly as uniform. Patriots' Day falls on Monday, April 19, 2027, and every district that publishes an April calendar is closed that week. The one real divergence is Friday, April 16. In Falmouth, South Portland, Scarborough and RSU 14 there is no school that day, whether the calendar calls it spring break, a teacher day or a staff flex day. In Portland, Gorham, MSAD 51, RSU 5 and Brunswick, April 16 is a normal school day. If you are booking travel for a family split across two districts, that Friday is the only date in the entire spring calendar where the two of them disagree.

Thanksgiving is the same story told a third time. Every district is closed Wednesday November 25 through Friday November 27, 2026, but only some of them call November 25 a break. In Gorham it is a flex day, in RSU 5 a professional compensation day, in RSU 14 a teacher workday, in MSAD 51 the first flex day, and in Scarborough a staff flex day. Same three days out of school, five different words for it. December is uniform too: every district that publishes one is closed December 23 through 31, 2026.

Early release is where the districts genuinely differ

If you need childcare planning rather than vacation planning, the early-release pattern is the number that actually varies, and it varies a lot.

Portland releases early every Wednesday, district-wide, and dismissal times differ by school: 1:10 at East End, Longfellow, Ocean Avenue and Talbot; 2:30 at Lyseth, Presumpscot, Reiche and Rowe; 1:50 at the middle and high schools; 12:20 at Cliff and Peaks Island.

RSU 14 releases PreK through grade 5 every Wednesday, at 12:50 in Windham and 12:30 in Raymond, with grades 6 through 12 released on four dates only.

Most other districts run roughly monthly. Gorham has eight, Falmouth has eight, South Portland has ten, Brunswick has nine, MSAD 51 has five plus conference days.

RSU 5 has two. February 3 and May 12. That is the entire year. A Freeport parent and a Portland parent are managing completely different problems.

Knowing the first day is only half the problem. The other half is what time the bell actually rings, and that is published far worse than the calendar is: we could find readable 2026-27 bell times for only two of the twelve districts, Scarborough and South Portland. Those bell times are also what defines the 15 mph school zone window, which switches back on in Gorham on August 26 along with the stopping rule for school buses: both are read from the statute in our guide to Maine's school bus law and the school zone speed limit. If you are new to the area and trying to assemble the rest of this picture, our guides to moving to Portland, Maine and property taxes by town cover the two things people research next. For the weeks the calendar just opened up, we keep a running list of indoor and rainy day options.

How to verify this yourself

Every date on this page came off a district-published document, not an aggregator. If you want to check one:

1. Go to the district's own domain. Not a school-calendar site, not a search snippet.
2. Confirm the school-year label on the document itself. A 2025-26 calendar and a 2026-27 calendar are visually near-identical, and several districts reuse the same URL year over year and overwrite it, so cached page titles lie.
3. Look for the adoption stamp. Most of these calendars carry one, and it tells you whether you are reading the version the board actually approved.
4. Confirm the state. Portland Oregon, Falmouth Massachusetts, Yarmouth Massachusetts, Gorham New Hampshire, Windham New Hampshire, Freeport Illinois and Brunswick Georgia all have school districts, and all of them outrank their Maine namesakes on some searches. We hit Portland Oregon and Falmouth Massachusetts in the top ten results while researching this page.

If your child is not in a district calendar yet, the same verification problem is far worse one rung down. Early-childhood providers in this region mostly do not publish a price at all, and the ones that do bury it: we found the market's only current full-day rate card saved as an unsearchable scan, and transcribed it in what child care actually costs in Greater Portland.

FAQ

When does school start in Portland, Maine in 2026?

Monday, August 31, 2026 for grades 1 through 12, and Tuesday, September 1 for Pre-K and kindergarten. Portland Public Schools last revised the 2026-27 calendar on March 31, 2026.

Which Greater Portland school district starts earliest?

Gorham, on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, for grades 6 and 9 and PreK, with the rest of the district starting August 27. That is five days ahead of the August 31 start used by most neighboring districts and six days ahead of Yarmouth.

Do all Greater Portland districts have the same February vacation?

Yes, in practice. Every district that publishes a 2026-27 calendar is closed the five school days of the week of Monday, February 15, 2027. Districts label it differently: Scarborough lists February 13 to 21 because it includes the weekends, Portland lists February 16 to 19 and counts Presidents' Day separately, and the rest list February 15 to 19.

Is April 16, 2027 a school day in Greater Portland?

It depends on the district, and it is the only spring date where they disagree. There is no school on Friday, April 16 in Falmouth, South Portland, Scarborough and RSU 14. It is a regular school day in Portland, Gorham, MSAD 51, RSU 5 and Brunswick.

When does school start in Westbrook, Maine in 2026?

Monday, August 31, 2026 for grades 1 through 12. Kindergarten at Canal, Congin and Saccarappa starts Wednesday, September 2, and that first day is an early release. PreK at Canal starts Thursday, September 3. Westbrook is also closed Friday, September 4 and Monday, September 7 for Labor Day weekend. The district posted these dates on August 4, 2026 and they match its full 2026-27 calendar.

When does school start in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 2026?

Thursday, August 27, 2026 for grades 5 and 9 only, and that is a half day. All students in grades 1 through 12 start Monday, August 31. Cape Elizabeth brings its two transition grades in alone because those are the years students change buildings. School offices reopen August 17.

Why is the Westbrook or Cape Elizabeth calendar so hard to find online?

Because neither one is machine-readable, which is not the same as unpublished. Westbrook posts its full 2026-27 calendar as a scanned image, so a text scraper reads the page as blank while a person sees the entire year. Cape Elizabeth publishes its first days as entries on a live events calendar that renders only in a browser. Both are readable if you open them in a browser rather than fetching them. Third-party calendar aggregators generally do neither, which is why their Westbrook and Cape Elizabeth rows are inferred rather than sourced.

When does school get out in June 2027?

Between June 10 and June 15, 2027, depending on the district, but the dates are not directly comparable. Ten districts publish a last day that assumes zero snow days and moves later with each cancellation. Gorham publishes June 15 with five storm days already built in, so its date moves earlier in a mild winter while everyone else's moves later.

Which district has the most early-release days?

Portland and RSU 14 both release early every Wednesday, Portland district-wide and RSU 14 for PreK through grade 5. At the other end, RSU 5 in Freeport has exactly two early-release days all year, February 3 and May 12, 2027.