Vacations During the School Year
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What are your opinions on taking vacations during the school year, readers? Do you plan them without regrets? Do you feel like that’s doable only up until a certain grade (and then, what grade)? Is there a difference in your mind between a day or two here or there, or a full week?
For my $.02, we’ve always been against taking the kids out of school for a planned vacation. But last year, both kids had missed so much school for COVID (exposures or illnesses) that after we all had both natural immunity plus vaccinated immunity, we took the kids out for a week at Disney mid-February. (I’d been especially worried since I never tested positive when the others had it so I didn’t have natural immunity, and worried my November booster would be waning by the scheduled spring break.) No regrets, given the last weird few years we’ve had, we had an amazing time at Disney.
As we approach the current school year, though, I’m thinking about it again — especially taking my youngest, who starts school earlier than my eldest, out for a few days so we can have a last-minute Labor Day weekend. It feels like it’s in poor taste, but I find myself questioning a) if it really matters in the third grade, b) if this year will look at all like last year in terms of missed days due to COVID policies, and c) with so many years where we didn’t vacation at all, shouldn’t we grab every opportunity where we’re healthy and able?
(I suppose this is a whole other question – have you changed your vacation strategy to make up for lost or missed vacations during the pandemic years? We’re discussing this — as well as whether extreme weather and more are affecting travel decisions – over at Corporette today.)
What are your opinions on taking vacations during the school year, readers? Do you plan them without regrets? Do you feel like that’s doable only up until a certain grade (and then, what grade)? Is there a difference in your mind between a day or two here or there, or a full week?
Stock photo via Stencil.
My MIL will give us things for our infant daughter, and then demand them back if she doesn’t think we are using them sufficiently. How do we handle this? If we tell her we don’t want something when she gives it to us, she is very huffy. She never includes a receipt. We cannot donate items because she’s over once a week and always takes stock of what we do and don’t have out. She brings a new gift each visit so they really add up. Recent “gifts” that she’s demanded back have included a 3-foot stuffed unicorn and a vtech walker for our daughter who doesn’t yet walk. (I donated both and told her, which went over extremely poorly). We do not have storage space to pretend we will use these items later. We already don’t have a great relationship and with our daughter’s first birthday coming up in the next couple of months I’m steeling myself for a mound of unwanted gifts she’ll demand back months later. My husband has accepted that this is the way she is, but his tolerance for clutter is a lot higher than mine. She likes to buy things SHE likes without regard to the recipient so past attempts to suggest certain things we actually need have gotten mixed results.
We do not take vacations during the school year simply because our school district has draconian limits on absences, excused or unexcused. 20 absences in elementary or 10 in secondary school = automatic failure. The real risk is getting referred to court, which happens with some frequency after 5 – 10 absences; the reason doesn’t matter. At work I’ve had judges from all over the state complain to me that their time is being wasted on these matters. We are lucky we did private kindergarten instead of public, because our daughter missed around 20 days that year just due to illness.
I’m against it. Our kids love school and school always plans fun stuff for the Friday before long weekends. We have done it before when other plans just aren’t feasible- once for a 6 hour flight to get to thanksgiving. We weren’t going to fly Wednesday afternoon before thanksgiving with 3 young kids- and we had to go.
FWIW our elem kids are not at risk of getting behind at school. My calculus would be different if they were struggling.
I’m a former teacher, in case that matters..
Life’s short. We’ll do it in elementary school but unlikely during middle or high. I also take in to account commitments to extra curriculars and teams, which are probably way more critical at the older ages. Also, DH’s family is out of town. Sometimes the difference between a 2pm flight and an after-school Friday night flight is literally thousands. I imagine we’ll have to make that judgment call around the holidays or potentially, which we will opt to do. Again, life is short and family and experiences are priceless.
I do remember my mom calling me in “sick” a handful of times during middle and high school to sneak up north and go skiing with her on a whim. It was our secret, and it was so memorable. We’d probably do that, but thoughtfully – not around tests, big events or other obligations.
My thoughts on this changed during the pandemic. Before, I wouldn’t take my kid out for non-essential “fun” travel during the school year. But now, I’m much more open to it, particularly in younger grades, for a few reasons: 1) Having witnessed classroom ‘academics’ for a year and a half of distance learning, they don’t miss much that can’t be easily made up at home; 2) Life is short, and saddest of all 3) Not sure how much of the natural world is going to be around though my kids’ adulthood due to climate change. I mean, I wouldn’t pull them out in the weeks leading up to or during standardized testing, but a few days on the front or back end of a holiday break? Sure. In fact, I’m planning a family trip to Yosemite that will cause a few missed days of school late next spring because May is the best viewing for the waterfalls and I’m pretty sure the whole park is going to be lost to a forest fire sooner rather than later. Moreover, this year, the last month of school was basically a daily “good bye to the school year” activity or field trip of some sort, so I feel no guilt whatsoever.
Ugh, this is a huge point of contention between me and DH that is going to get a lot less hypothetical next year when our kid starts K. I would not pull a kid out to lie on a beach at a resort or go to Disney, even we could save a bucket of money by doing so (e.g., we’ll go to the Caribbean over Christmas-NYE week, even though it would be like a third the cost to go a couple weeks earlier). But I view missing school for any educational trip to not be that big a deal in elementary school, and I particularly have no hesitation about doing it for a trip that can’t be done without missing at least some school like Antarctica. DH’s view is no missed school, ever. I’m not looking forward to the fights to come about this.