Halloween and school.. what do the peas think.

This is what our school does, and many schools around here.  The thing is, you can find a book about any princess or superhero you were going to dress up as anyway - so it's still just the whole school dressed in costumes for the day.  We even had a 5th grader find a book about The Scream painting so he could wear his Scream mask, which then scared the younger kids ...

I agree with freecharlie that the day AFTER Halloween should be a holiday.  Let parents deal with their own sugar-crashed kids at home instead of packing them off to school.  

I have suggestion. I created an unofficial parents FB page for a very large international school. My only rule was no complaints about the school, the staff, or its policies. If you have a problem, take it directly to the school. It kept the board positive and stopped the crazy bitchfests like the op described. I only had to delete 3 posts in 3 years.
As a former teacher, whatever we do in situations like these, someone will complain. My last one was a Muslim mom in a hijab making a huge fuss that the Christmas party was too short and not elaborate enough!!

Our school district always had a professional day on Nov 1.  They knew they wouldn't get anything out of the kids that day so they adjusted the quarters so that would always be the case.

I wish our school district would do this instead of a day off a week later for election day.  No one even votes in the school buildings anymore and we have mail in ballots.
Makes so much more sense!

IMHO if the elementary/middle/high school dress code allows for costumes on any or even just designated days (eg spirit week, language arts projects), then it should also be acceptable - not required - to wear a costume (in compliance with said code) on Halloween.

Actually, I really like the way your school has done this. While not everything will be "fair", I actually don't see anything unfair about having K-2 in the costumes and not (but other alternatives) after that. They have 3 years to dress up, and have that tradition at school. It's sweet and festive. The older kids don't "need" to dress up for Halloween at school (they can dress up for Halloween or other community events outside school still!), and by that older age you start having to really monitor and set rules around costumes being school-appropriate and everything with that. Seems like a very good solution to me.

As a parent of a second grader, I prefer no dress up for Halloween at school. We have a hard enough time in the morning with nothing extra to deal with. My kids' schools don't dress up and trust me, they miss NOTHING. The entire month of October is filled with Halloween and fall activities put on by organizations, businesses, and churches. My kids have seen many of their school friends in costume, several different costumes per kid in fact because again, SO MANY ACTIVITIES these days. My kids have a few costumes a piece, saving their real costume for ToTing. Some classes have parties but it depends on the teachers and it really more along the lines of a really festive and themed snack time.

Maybe it doesn't bother me because growing up (40) we had parties at school but we did not dress up for school. We had a party at school and ToTing and that was IT. And it was exciting. *Maybe* a party at someone's house or your church (which were not public like most are these days). We didn't have Trunk or Treats, festivals, farms to visit every day of October. I am actually finding that many people don't even bring their kids out ToTing anymore because the kids and parents are so burned out by the time October 31st rolls around.

With so many opportunities to dress up and interact with school friends outside of school, I just don't see the point of introducing that sort of distraction and frustration (in the form of kids/teachers having to keep up with costumes) into a school day. 

Our kids went to school in complete costume and stayed in it for the day.  They also had a Renaissance Assembly (for outstanding achievement and behavior) and sometimes a school wide assembly just for entertainment.  

Society often complains that schools start too early with academics and kindergarten kids are pushed too soon.  Schools teach to the test and too much focus is put on standardized testing.  Halloween is one time where all of that pressure goes by the wayside.  Kids love the day to dress up and just relax a bit more than they normally would.  We put a lot of pressure on kids to perform the other 179 days (or so).  I was always more than happy to make the day about something different.  We wrote about the Mysteries of Harris Burdick, we solved multi step math problems that involved solving a mystery and we watched The Great Pumpkin and wrote letters to the younger kids in the school.  It was still academics, but I'd bet the kids would tell you we partied all day because we were in costume and snacking on treats much of the day.  Win-win.  

Honestly, I don't have anything against kids in costumes, but I'd say dump wearing the costumes to school altogether. I wish my son's school had. Instead they had a "vocabulary parade" where kids had to dress up as vocabulary words. Amd my grown son's elementary school did a book character dress up. Ithought it sucked because then I ended up having to come up with TWO costumes. No kid wanted those things as their main costume to ToT in.
If it was me, I'd say skip it. Maybe they can get volunteers for an evening event. Our school did this also, which I *did* enjoy. They had games, cake walk, chili, desserts, candy, and a hayride.

We had book character day back in January - my youngest went as Harry Potter and that's what she's wearing for Hallowe'en this year. My older daughter some years ago went as Laura Ingalls Wilder for book character day and again for Hallowe'en (that costume has gotten a workout as she also wore it to the school pioneer celebration for the city's 150th and her sister wore it as Mary Ingalls for Book Character day last year)

But we're bookworms here so....

The first thing I would check on my school calendar was the day of Halloween.  I loved it when it fell on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.  Plus kids would sneak candy in for the next few days.  

I wouldn't care what the rules were about dressing up for Halloween.

As far as I'm concerned it's fine if the school allows costumes. It's fine if the school doesn't allow costumes. It's also fine if the school allows costumes for some grades and not for others.

It's just not something I would get worked up about.

I'm worrying/wondering about the kids who don't have Halloween costumes.