Hacienda La Puente Unified School District starts school today before any other school district in the San Gabriel Valley.

Why?

The reason is that the district wants to give students as much time as possible to prepare for AP testing, officials said.

“This was a decision made in consultation with the staff, parents and students,” said Manoj Roychowdhury, associate superintendent of business services for the district. “It appears that the goal was to align the school calendar with state testing and advanced placement tests to increase student achievement scores.”

Many, if not most public school districts are heading back to school in the coming weeks.

But not this early.

The district ends school in mid-May. La Puente High, for example, graduated this past school year on May 17 after starting school Aug. 4, 2021.

Another issue that could separate Hacienda La Puente from some other districts is it is requiring all staff to continue to wear masks indoors to protect against the coronavirus.

Masks are strongly encouraged for students indoors and optional for staff and students outdoors.

“I think it’s exciting because HLPUSD is like the trailblazers right?” said Marci Chavez, principal at Nelson Elementary School in La Puente. “We start first. So we make a lot of decisions to open up the year and I’m really proud of the decision that our district made to have the masks continue indoors because it’s about the safety of the students, right, and the staff.”