Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer in most school buildings.
It's also when half your team starts asking for time off.
Vacation requests stack up. Family commitments fall on the same weeks. Some staff want July 4 week. Some want the last two weeks before school starts. A few want to disappear entirely from June 15 through August 1 — exactly when summer cleaning needs to be in full swing.
You can't say no to all of it. Your team has earned their time off and most of them have planned around the school calendar all year.
But you also can't run a building with three people when the schedule called for seven.
The answer is a coverage plan built before the requests start arriving — one that protects the work without burning out the people who stayed.
Here's how to build it.
1. Map the work before you map the people.
Most coverage plans start in the wrong place. They start with "who's available" and then try to fit work around it.
Flip it. Start with the work.
Lay out every major summer project by week — floor stripping in the elementary wings, carpet extraction in the middle school, restroom resets, exterior work, equipment maintenance, deep cleans of cafeteria and gym. Estimate how many staff each project needs and how long it should take.
By the end of this exercise you should have a week-by-week picture of what has to get done and how many bodies it takes to do it.
That's your coverage floor. Anything below it is a problem.
2. Pull vacation requests early — and pull them all at once.
Don't take vacation requests rolling. That's how you end up with three people requesting the same week and finding out about it in May.
Set a deadline — usually mid-April — and require every staff member to submit their summer vacation requests by that date. Then sit down with the full picture and make decisions all at once.
Two benefits. First, you can see the conflicts before approving anything. Second, you can balance the calendar — staggering vacations so the same critical week isn't gutted by overlapping time off.
If this is the first year you're doing it, expect pushback. Once people see that it gets them more predictable approvals and fewer denials, the resistance fades.
3. Build coverage in tiers, not solos.
The single biggest mistake in summer staffing is treating each building as one person's responsibility.
Tier the coverage. Primary staff are assigned to a building. Backup staff cover when primary is on vacation. Floater staff move between buildings as needed.
Even if your district is small, the principle holds. Nobody is the only person who knows how to do the floor work in Building B. Nobody is the only person with keys to the gymnasium. If one person being out collapses the schedule, the schedule was never strong enough.
This also protects you. If your primary floor crew lead has a family emergency in mid-July, the work doesn't stop — the backup steps in.
4. Black out the ten days before the last day of school and the ten days before reopening.
Two windows every summer should be no-vacation zones as a general policy.
The ten days leading into the last day of school. Final walkthroughs, end-of-year events, graduations, locker cleanouts, last-minute repairs that have to happen before students leave. Your team needs to be fully staffed during this stretch because once students walk out, the summer schedule starts the next morning — and you can't begin a strong summer with a half crew already worn down.
The ten days leading into opening day. Teachers come back. Deliveries arrive. Furniture goes back into rooms. Final walkthroughs happen. Anything that wasn't finished gets caught in this window, and there's no margin for error. A short crew here means buildings open with work still pending — and that's the kind of thing administrators remember.
Things happen. People have weddings, family emergencies, medical appointments, and life events that don't reschedule around a school calendar. The black-out dates aren't a wall — they're a default. Time off during those windows is available with written approval from the Director of Facilities or Operations Supervisor on a case-by-case basis. The point isn't to deny requests. The point is to make sure those requests are reviewed against the coverage plan, not approved automatically.
Communicate the black-out dates in writing when vacation requests open in April. Make the exception process clear at the same time — staff should know exactly who to ask and what happens if approval is granted. No surprises in June.
Yes, this means some people won't get the exact weeks they wanted on their first request. But it also means the people who do get their requested weeks know the schedule actually holds together — and that the work isn't going to fall on three exhausted people in mid-August.
5. Document the schedule and share it.
A coverage plan that lives in your head doesn't help anyone.
Once the schedule is set, write it down. Names, buildings, weeks, projects. One page if possible. Share it with everyone on the team — not just supervisors. When staff can see the full picture, they understand why their request was approved or modified, and they know who's covering what when they need to coordinate.
Post it in the break room. Email it to the team. Save a copy where it can't get lost.
A printed schedule on the wall ends more disputes than a verbal answer ever will.
The bigger picture
Summer staffing isn't really about vacation policy. It's about whether the work gets done while respecting the people who do it.
A good coverage plan does both. It gives staff predictable time off, protects the buildings, and prevents the people who stay from carrying an unfair load. It takes a couple of hours to build in April and saves a hundred small problems in July.
Build it once. Use it every year. Adjust as you go.
— Daniel Operations Supervisor and founder of Facility Insight
P.S. A coverage plan keeps your buildings staffed. A safety program keeps that staff working safely — especially when you're rotating backup crews into work they don't do every week. The K-12 Facilities Safety Talk Program ($37) gives you 24 ready-to-deliver safety talks plus an annual training log to document every session. Use them weekly or monthly, all school year. → Get it here — $37
P.P.S. Building out the projects side of your summer schedule? The K-12 Summer Facilities Checklist Bundle ($27) covers every area of your building — classrooms, restrooms, hallways, cafeteria, gymnasium, and grounds. → $27
