Cedar Key’s school is back in session, and the county’s calendar is set through May
Levy County students returned to class on 12 August. On the island, "the schools" means one building — the pre-K-through-12 Cedar Key School — and here is the year ahead.
Classes are back in across Levy County. The district’s first day for students was 12 August, which means Cedar Key’s children have now finished the opening week of the 2026–27 school year.
On the island, going back to school is a shorter journey than in most places. Cedar Key does not have a separate elementary, middle and high school. It has one: Cedar Key School, a single campus that takes students from pre-kindergarten through the twelfth grade. A child can start there at four and graduate from the same set of buildings thirteen years later.
One school, a whole education
That structure is unusual, and for a small island community it is also the point. Cedar Key School is among the smallest public schools in the state, with an enrolment in recent years of fewer than 200 students across all thirteen grades. It has held an A rating from the Florida Department of Education in most recent years — a mark a school of its size sustains only when nearly everyone in the building is pulling the same direction.
It sits within the wider School Board of Levy County system, which runs around fifteen schools and serves roughly 5,600 students across Bronson, Chiefland, Williston, Yankeetown and the smaller communities in between. Cedar Key is the coastal end of that county — closer to the Gulf than to the county seat at Bronson — and its single school is the civic centre of the island in a way a larger town’s schools rarely are.
The dates worth putting on the fridge
The district’s adopted 2026–27 calendar sets out the shape of the year:
- First day of school: 12 August 2026
- Spring break: 15–19 March 2027
- Last day of school: 27 May 2027
Thanksgiving and winter breaks fall in their usual weeks in late November and late December; the district publishes the full calendar, including teacher workdays and early-release days, on its website.
Where to check, and what we have not confirmed
The authoritative source for any of this is the district itself. Term dates, closures and weather days are posted at levyk12.org, and Cedar Key School keeps its own page there with contact details.
Two notes on what we have not independently verified. The enrolment and grade figures above come from state and public school-data records rather than from a current district headcount, so treat them as recent rather than live. And on a coast where a September storm can close schools for days at a stretch — as happened in both 2023 and 2024 — the one thing a printed calendar cannot tell you is when the next weather day will fall. For that, the district’s own alerts are the ones to follow.