The Maine Agenda › Live in Maine
What Time Does School Start in Greater Portland, Maine? School Is In, and Two Districts Published.
School opened in this region on August 31 and September 1, so the year is two weeks old as this is read. We published this page on August 2, when the answer was that two of twelve school departments had put 2026-27 bell times somewhere a parent could find them, and we said at the time that we expected more districts to post between the middle and the end of August.
We re-opened all twelve on August 16, in a real browser, and the number was still two. On September 14 we re-read Scarborough's Calendar and School Hours page and it is unchanged, hours and 2026-27 label intact; the other eleven districts below are as we found them on August 16, and the next full pass over all twelve is scheduled for late September, after every district has had a month of school to post.
That is the finding, and it is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that in twelve days two districts moved backwards. MSAD 51 deleted the year label off its arrival and dismissal table instead of updating it, and RSU 5 took its school hours pages down entirely. One district moved forwards: Gorham High School's bell schedule page, which held zero clock times on August 4, now holds a full one. And one district we had filed under "we could not read it" turned out to publish the second best hours table in the region, which was our miss, not theirs.
The short answer
Scarborough, verified August 16 on the district's Calendar and School Hours page:
- Grades K-2: 8:50 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.
- Grades 3-5: 8:50 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.
- Grades 6-8: 8:00 a.m. to 2:25 p.m.
- Grades 9-12: 8:00 a.m. to 2:25 p.m.
Early release days dismiss K-5 at 1:45 p.m. and grades 6-12 at 12:55 p.m. Those are designated dates, not a standing weekly half day. The same page offers a 2025-26 calendar and a 2026-27 calendar as separate downloads, and the hours block itself carries no year, which is a small flaw in an otherwise clean page. The numbers match the 2026-27 calendar, which is dated March 20, 2026.
South Portland, verified August 16 on the School Year Calendar page, under a heading that reads 2026-2027 and a board approval date of February 9, 2026:
- Preschool: 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., early release 11:00 a.m.
- Elementary: 9:00 a.m. to 3:10 p.m., early release 12:40 p.m.
- Middle school, grades 5 and 6: 8:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., early release 12:30 p.m.
- Middle school, grades 7 and 8: 7:55 a.m. to 2:10 p.m., early release 11:40 a.m.
- High school: 8:10 a.m. to 2:25 p.m., early release 11:55 a.m.
South Portland remains the best in the region and it is not close. Five tiers, every one paired with its own early release time, on the same page as the calendar, under the year it describes, in plain text a phone and a screen reader can both read.
There is now a third document worth naming, and it belongs to a school rather than a district. Deering High School in Portland serves a PDF filenamed "26-27 DHS Bell Schedule." Blocks run 8:20 a.m. to 2:50 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and 8:20 a.m. to 1:50 p.m. on Wednesday, which is a standing weekly early release. Portland's other high school, Portland High, links to a page called Blue and White Calendar and Bell Schedule that returns a 404.
Settle into Maine. Free.
Neighborhoods, real costs, the local rules that catch people out, and the clubs and rooms worth knowing about.
No edition has gone out yet. Sign up and you are on the first one. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
What the other ten publish
| District | What you can actually find | Year on it |
|---|---|---|
| Scarborough | Full K-12 hours plus early release, district page | 2026-27 calendar alongside |
| South Portland | Five tiers plus early release, plain text | 2026-2027, board approved 2/9/26 |
| Portland | Deering HS 8:20 to 2:50, Wed to 1:50; Portland HS page 404s | 26-27 on the Deering file |
| MSAD 51 | 6-12 7:50 to 2:20, K-5 8:50 to 3:20, in a clean table | None, and it used to say 2025-2026 |
| Westbrook | Six-row table, pre-K through vocational centre, plain text | None |
| Yarmouth | YHS 8:00 to 2:45, Wednesday starts 9:00, Google Doc | None |
| Gorham | GHS 7:50 to 2:10 by period, posted as images | None |
| Falmouth | FHS 8:00 to 2:20 in a PDF; FMS 7:50 to 2:30 in images | 2025-2026 on the FHS file |
| Cape Elizabeth | CEHS 7:55 to 2:20, in a Google Doc | 2024 |
| Brunswick | BHS warning bell 7:40, first period 7:45 | 2024-2025 |
| RSU 14 Windham | Only a delayed-opening schedule, no normal day | 2020-2021 |
| RSU 5 Freeport | Nothing. The hours pages now return 404 | n/a |
Some of that needs explaining, because the failure modes are different and what you should do about each one differs too.
MSAD 51 went from stale to undated. On August 4 the district's transportation page carried a legible arrival and dismissal table under a heading that read "2025-2026 School Arrival and Dismissal Times." On August 16 the numbers are identical and the heading reads "School Arrival and Dismissal Times," with the year removed. That is worse, not better. A stale label at least tells a reader what they are looking at. An undated table tells them nothing and looks current. Lower on the same page there is now a section headed "2026-2027 BUS SCHEDULE," so the district has clearly done its 2026-27 routing work, which is circumstantial reason to believe 7:50 and 8:50 are the real numbers. It is still not the district saying so.
RSU 5 removed its hours. Two weeks ago Freeport High School and Freeport Middle School each published a plain sentence stating the school day, and we praised them for it. Those pages now return 404. Google still indexes them and still shows the old times in its result snippets, which means a Freeport parent searching today gets a preview of the right answer attached to a dead link. Meanwhile the superintendent published a warm and detailed 2026-27 welcome letter on August 11 that names six new administrators, three community forum dates and a systems and sustainability study, and does not contain a single clock time.
Gorham fixed the thing we criticised. Gorham High School's Bell Schedule page held only monthly Maroon and White rotation calendars on August 4, and we said so. It now leads with the actual schedule: first period 7:50 to 9:15, second 9:20 to 10:45, third 10:50 to 12:40 with three lunch waves inside it, fourth 12:45 to 2:10. It is posted as image files rather than as text, so a search engine cannot read it and a screen reader may not, and there is no year on it. But a parent who opens that page now gets an answer, which is the whole job.
Westbrook was our mistake, and it disagrees with itself. We wrote in the first version that Westbrook's calendar page carried no hours. That was true of the calendar page and beside the point, because Westbrook has a School Information page carrying a full table: three elementary schools at 8:25 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., Congin's pre-K at 9:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., the middle school at 7:35 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., the high school at 7:50 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., the regional vocational centre at 7:35 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., and a note that Wednesday dismissal is an hour earlier. It is the second most useful hours page in the region and we missed it.
It is also contradicted by its own footer, on that same page. The footer that appears at the bottom of every Westbrook school page reads "School Hours: WMS and High School 7:30-2:15. Elementary Schools 8:25-3:20." The table above it says the middle school starts at 7:35 and the high school runs 7:50 to 2:30. Three of those four numbers disagree with the table sitting a screen length higher. If you are a Westbrook parent, use the table rather than the footer, and confirm with the office.
Brunswick's schedule is reachable only if you guess the URL. The bell schedule page Google sends you to returns a 404. The same path with an extra segment in front of it loads fine and shows a document headed "Brunswick High School Bell Schedule 2024-2025," two school years old, with a warning bell at 7:40 and first period at 7:45. The embedded document is clipped at the bottom of its frame, so the regular dismissal time is not visible on the page at all. The footer does state that early release dismissal is 11:15 a.m., and the schedule marks early release as the first Wednesday of the month.
Windham publishes what happens on a snow day and not what happens on a normal one. Windham High School's School Info menu offers a Delayed Start Schedule and no ordinary bell schedule. That delayed start document is a Google Doc titled "Copy of WHS Delayed School Start Schedule 2020-2021." It is six school years old and it still has "Copy of" in the title. It does at least tell you that a one hour delay starts at 8:25 and a two hour delay at 9:25, which implies a normal start somewhere near 7:25.
Yarmouth does the opposite of everyone else on Wednesday. Yarmouth High School's schedule, an undated Google Doc, runs advisory at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 2:45 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday it starts at 9:00 a.m. and still ends at 2:45 p.m. Portland's Deering and Westbrook release early on Wednesday. Yarmouth starts late. Brunswick runs an early release on the first Wednesday of the month only. Do not assume your neighbour's Wednesday is your Wednesday.
What to actually do
Look for a document that names the school year, not a page that merely exists. Of the twelve departments here, exactly two put the year and the hours in the same place. Everywhere else the year is missing, wrong, or attached to a different file.
If the only times you can find carry no year, treat them as a good guess. Start times in this region are stable year to year and the numbers above almost certainly are the real ones. But a page that is quietly correct looks identical to a page that is quietly stale, and August is exactly when the difference matters.
Call the school office rather than the district office, and call in the last two weeks of August. Individual schools know their own bell times before any website reflects them, and the front office phones are staffed before the first day.
If your children attend two schools, check both. The gap between the elementary tier and the secondary tier runs close to an hour in most districts here, and South Portland alone publishes five different start times.
One note on why this is worth chasing beyond the bus and childcare. Maine's 15 mph school zone speed limit is defined off these times: 29-A M.R.S. section 2074(1)(A) applies it for the half hour before and after the start of the school day and the half hour before and after the end, flashing sign or not. We read that statute and the school bus stopping rule in full in our guide to Maine's school bus law and the school zone speed limit. We also mapped every district's 2026-27 first day of school, which is the one thing every district in this region does publish on time.
What we checked and what we did not. On August 16 we opened each district's calendar or transportation page and each district's high school, in a browser that runs JavaScript, and we opened the linked documents rather than trusting a search summary. We did not open every elementary and middle school in all twelve districts. Where we say a district publishes nothing, we mean we could not find it by the route a parent would take. If your school posts hours somewhere we missed, that is worth telling us, and we will correct this page the way we corrected it on August 4.
FAQ
Which Greater Portland districts have published 2026-27 bell times?
Two, as of August 16, 2026: Scarborough and South Portland. Both put the hours with the calendar under a heading naming the 2026-27 school year. One individual school has also done it, Deering High School in Portland, which serves a PDF filenamed 26-27 DHS Bell Schedule. The other ten districts publish times labelled for an earlier year, times with no year at all, times inside image files, or nothing at all.
What time does school start in Scarborough, Maine for 2026-27?
Grades K-5 start at 8:50 a.m. and dismiss at 3:15 p.m. Grades 6-12 start at 8:00 a.m. and dismiss at 2:25 p.m. On designated early release days K-5 dismisses at 1:45 p.m. and grades 6-12 at 12:55 p.m. Verified on the district's Calendar and School Hours page on August 16, 2026, matching the 2026-27 calendar dated March 20, 2026.
What time does school start in South Portland, Maine for 2026-27?
Elementary schools run 9:00 a.m. to 3:10 p.m., middle school grades 5 and 6 run 8:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., grades 7 and 8 run 7:55 a.m. to 2:10 p.m., and the high school runs 8:10 a.m. to 2:25 p.m. Preschool runs 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Early release dismissals are 12:40 p.m. elementary, 12:30 p.m. for grades 5 and 6, 11:40 a.m. for grades 7 and 8, 11:55 a.m. at the high school and 11:00 a.m. for preschool. Board approved February 9, 2026, and unchanged on August 16.
What time does school start in Westbrook, Maine?
Canal, Congin and Saccarappa elementary schools run 8:25 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., Congin's pre-K runs 9:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., the middle school runs 7:35 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., the high school runs 7:50 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and the regional vocational centre runs 7:35 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Wednesday dismissal is one hour earlier. These come from the district's School Information page, which carries no year label and is contradicted by the site footer on that same page, so confirm with the school office.
What time does school start in Cumberland and North Yarmouth?
MSAD 51 publishes grades 6-12 at 7:50 a.m. to 2:20 p.m. and grades K-5 at 8:50 a.m. to 3:20 p.m., with early release dismissals of 1:35 p.m. and 12:35 p.m. As of August 16, 2026 that table carries no school year at all. Until early August it was headed 2025-2026. The same page now carries a 2026-2027 bus schedule section, so the district has done its routing, but it has not stated that these hours apply to the coming year.
Why can I not find my district's bell schedule online?
Five reasons show up repeatedly here. The page carries last year's label or no label at all. The schedule is posted as an image or a PDF that cannot be read as text. The document has not been touched in two to six years. The page requires JavaScript and returns nothing to a plain client. Or the URL a search engine indexed has since broken while the old content still shows in the search snippet, which is what happened to RSU 5 and to Brunswick.
Does an early release day mean the same thing in every district?
No, and the pattern is not regional. Portland's Deering High and Westbrook run a weekly Wednesday early release. Brunswick High runs one on the first Wednesday of the month. Scarborough uses designated early release dates rather than a weekly half day. Yarmouth High goes the other way and starts an hour later on Wednesday while dismissing at the usual time. Check your own district's calendar for the specific dates.
When do districts usually finalise bell times for the new year?
Bell times depend on bus routing, which is completed in August rather than in the spring when school boards adopt the calendar. That is why a district can publish a March calendar with every date on it and still have no hours posted two weeks before the first bell. In practice the hours page gets updated when somebody remembers, which in this region means the last two weeks of August for districts with communications staff, and sometimes never for districts without.