School Organization 

School Year

The school year consists of 180 instructional days beginning in mid-August and ending in mid-June. There are 3 professional development days and up to 2 weeks of orientation/preparation days at the beginning of a school year.  There are two semesters of two quarters each. School breaks include one week in October, three weeks over December/January, and one week in March/April.  Tsagaan Sar is a brief but important Mongolian holiday in January or February to celebrate the Mongolian lunar new year. Please refer to the school calendar at the end of this manual.  This calendar will be updated from time to time. The most current version will always be posted on the website and shared on the school’s drive.

Academic Day

The academic day begins at 8:00 am and ends at 3:10 pm except that classes end at 2:10 pm on Wednesdays.  All students arriving after 8:00 must sign in at reception and will be marked late by their teacher. Daily attendance is taken in the first 30 minutes of the day. 

The 8-Day Rolling Schedule

Each school day in the academic year is numbered from “1” to “8”, with the first day of school, August 19th, being a “DAY 1”. For the subsequent 7 school days, there will be a different schedule each day. Students will need to know the day number in order to know which classes they attend that day. These day numbers will be obvious throughout the school and on the ISU website. You will notice on the ISU Community Calendar that when there are planned disruptions to the school calendar and no classes are being held on a particular day, that day is not numbered. The numbering sequence skips over that day and therefore classes are not lost. The numbering of the school days for 2025-26 has been set and will not be changed. If there are unplanned losses of school days, unfortunately the lost days cannot be rescheduled.