Let's Take a Vacation the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL (mini-vent)

Honestly, I think it’s completely stupid when school isn’t over by Memorial Day and if schools want people to be there, they shouldn’t schedule school after summer begins (I count Memorial Day as the beginning of summer and think that’s the cultural norm).

If students are exempt from finals or can arrange to take them early, good for them.

Everyone here has been kind of freaking out with how early our school year is ending now since we moved up the start date. Our last day is June 1st this year and next year will be May 31st. We start school now the third week of August.

When my kids first started school we weren't done until about June 15th or so. The school district I taught in wasn't done until around the 20 something of June. This early end of the school year is a very big cultural shift around here. A lot of people complain about starting school in August and not waiting until after Labor Day.

We now start at the very end of August, and end on June 20th (yes, that's a Tuesday, Juneteenth 3-day weekend, plus one snow day...) which I hate. Bring back starting after Labor Day!


Here, they start taking the laptops/i-pads away two weeks before school ends, which is just dumb. So suddenly all the hs kids are doing math with worksheets and pencils and no one can access their textbooks to study for the finals

This is a ridiculously broad brush. Different parts of the country have different norms. School has never been over by Memorial Day in the areas I’ve lived in. It also has never started before Labor Day. I’d hate having school in August 🤷‍♀️

“Summer” for us was always mid-June until early-September. It was good weather wise because July and August are usually our hottest months. They have only recently started changing the summer to late-May to late-August. I prefer starting school after Labor Day. We never took the kids out early from school, we just didn’t plan anything until after June.

OP, that does suck.  I had military kids leave for a month before school got out or start a month late. Sometimes the parents were both deployed and whoever was going to take them lived elsewhere. Thankfully I could just stop the grading where it was, but I know in high school it becomes much more challenging. My favorite was when a parent let you know after they'd already left that they wanted all of the kid's stuff and grades sent to the office by the end of the day.  Teaching doesn't work like that.

That being said, there are a ton of reasons that districts don't go by someone's ideal schedule. My friend who works on the East coast says that kids go later so they can work full time in the summer months (Mid June to Labor Day). I know of some districts that don't have air conditioning and so starting earlier in August isn't great. When we first started all of the state testing (and threatened district take overs), our year got pushed earlier and earlier so the kids would have more days before the tests that were in March (for the end of year expectations). Some states go by days and others go by hours. Then you have the added scheduling problems that schools that have lots of snow days added into their schedule have that some southern states might not have. There just isn't a one size fits all schedule that will work for 50 million kids in school.

My dd missed finals last year in middle school due to COVID. They just used her grade as it was. Not sure how HS would deal with it.

I understand that.

I’m saying that is too many days of school, as in the state shouldn’t require so many.

They could do this but the parents complain then too. Why? That means school would start at the beginning of August. That's summer too.........

Our elementary schools have tried to work with the high schools so the kids have the same breaks. What that means is that high school starts earlier so they can get the semester completed prior to Christmas break. That means start earlier in August.

I would not pull my kids from school on those last days, as much for the inconvenience to the teachers as for the closure that comes at the end of the school year.

Having said that, over the years my kids were in 9 different school districts, each with their own approach to the school calendar. School started from the first week in August to the second week in September and finished between mid May and the first week in July. My opinion is that no one will ever be happy and there isn't an easy solution for anyone.

Honestly, in a perfect world I'd like to see school go for about 10 months, with 2-3 weeks off mid school year (the end of December in the US) and more flexible breaks. I'd like to normalize the concept of taking a break every now and then, of spending time with family other than those angst-ridden winter holidays, and floating days in the year when you are sick, have some sort of life crisis, or just need a day. I think that would encourage more adults to take their vacation time and to just take the time to breathe. If other countries can do it and still keep on churning, so can the US.

I do think that there would be an adjustment and a limit to the "floater" days that a child would take, just like there is in the working world. It would be an adjustment, but then we would be used to it and it would be the norm. The issue of missing learning would need to be addressed, either with extra instruction, online learning resources, or the like. And I don't think the burden should be all on the classroom teachers. Yes, that would need to be in the budget and in the US, that won't happen in a lot of states. But I also think that education needs a bigger budget...

When my kids were in their late elementary school years, you were really questioned if you pulled your child from school for any reason. I remember when DS was in 4th grade and DD 2nd grade, we pulled them for 2 days in late September for my brother's wedding. The principal found me at pickup and strongly encouraged me to cancel the trip, saying that they would lose valuable instruction time. It was my brother, all 4 of us were in the wedding, and my kids were in the gifted program! We need to make it ok that ours and other people's lives don't revolve 100% around the school calendar.

School isn’t the only kind of education. You learn just as much from travel.

But just because you live in a state that is hotter than the sun, that might make sense. But some of us live where school runs September to end of June…..