Taking kids out of school?

[nc762shooter]

I agree, take one of the taxi tours from the port in Nassau that drives you all over the island, seeing the poor section where kids are carrying water back to their homes with no electricity in old bleach containers before seeing Paradise Island and Atlantis is an unforgettable educational experience for someone of any age. Not to mention the opportunity on the ship to meet people from all over the world and a good time to practice manners. Definitely a more valuable experience than a week in school at that age.

 

I think this is just perception. I look at it as my son will learn a LOT about how all societies do not live as "rich" as we do in the States. Going to Jamaica and seeing true poverty would be a lesson he certainly won't learn in school. It would also likely be something he would remember for the rest of his life. ;)

[kassimer1]

we have done this multiple times. they all worked out except the last one where my son was a teen and got mono and then had to miss more school because of that. he had to go back to school even though he would sleepo the whole day after he wasnt contagious or he would not have been able to more on to the next grade.

Yes they do learn alot. especailly the 1st graders, they can actually snorkle and learn about life under the water, they can learn about local fauna, history...

The first time we did this my son swam, fed and held a stingray. he also learned how the locals get the conch out of the shell and what they do with the meat. i bet he remembers that more than the few math or english classes he would have sat in instead.

[shuttermom3]

We are cruising to the Carribean on the 25th and taking our son out of school. He's in the 5th grade and we have never taken a vacation during the school year but the deal we got on this 7 night cruise was crazy and we were not going to miss it.

I did tell his teachers and they are all giving him assignments, albeit it will be cruise friendly. His geography teacher is planning something special.

We will be driving from Va to Miami and then the 7 night cruise, driving back and they have 2 days out for a teachers workday and a weekend in there too, so he will only miss 4 days.

A cruise is VERY educational. Have fun! The memories will last a lifetime.

[shuttermom3]

Thanks for the replies! More than likely we will pull him out when we do go. Now, if only we lived in an area where we didn't need to fly to the port!:( I would love to sail out of NYC but, all the ships I love and can afford are out of FL!:rolleyes: Sure, we could drive but, no way can we take that much time off, which limits us to a closer port or airfare!

 

Check Baltimore, NJ and Norfolk VA. South Carolina also has ports. There are several between NY and FL

[GolfMom321]

I have 2 in HS, in different schools. One has a week off in Feb. The other doesn't. I'm pulling her out for 4 days (she's off President's Day). Who knows if she'll ever get another chance to go on vacation with her grandparents. The teachers know and are fine with it. I haven't pulled the kids out of school for a vacation in 7 years, and that was only 2 days. They had no problem making it up.

[Lerin]

There was a blog/ article on family vacation critic that discussed this. It includes a link to research on the benefits of taking kids on trips.

http://www.familyvacationcritic.com/taking-your-kids-out-of-school-to-travel/art/

[Bookish Angel]

We felt attendance in school, unless ill, should be an expectation. Also, there was plenty of opportunity for vacations in the school calendar. Also, we were paying a significant amount for our daughter's education so missing days was not acceptable to us.

 

The following is similar to what we based our school attendance policy.

 

 

http://www.attendanceworks.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/AW_HS-flyer_3-15-12.pdf

[chicaguapa]

We don't have the choice in the UK as you can get fined if you take the kids out of school, but we used to take ours out when they were younger and we still could.

 

Whenever I read these debates I often wonder if people would feel the same if their kid's teacher took time off school to go on holiday or if they felt their kid's education would suffer if they did?

[dsrdsrdsr]

As ever, it depends. The official line is that if a child has 500 weeks schooling and never has a holiday, that is better than if the child has 499 weeks schooling and 1 family holiday. That IMO is rubbish. So it's up to the parents to decide the happy medium, because official guidance is just plain wrong.

[Cuizer2]

We don't have the choice in the UK as you can get fined if you take the kids out of school, but we used to take ours out when they were younger and we still could.

 

Whenever I read these debates I often wonder if people would feel the same if their kid's teacher took time off school to go on holiday or if they felt their kid's education would suffer if they did?

 

There are substitute teachers on standby and when a teacher is sick, or having a baby the world doesn't end. If the teacher wants to take time off, I don't see a problem with that.

[happymom]

I just found the diary my daughter wrote on our first cruise. She was in grade one on the Carnival Inspiration. The memories could never be replaced by a week in school.:)

[navybankerteacher]

We don't have the choice in the UK as you can get fined if you take the kids out of school, but we used to take ours out when they were younger and we still could.

 

Whenever I read these debates I often wonder if people would feel the same if their kid's teacher took time off school to go on holiday or if they felt their kid's education would suffer if they did?

 

Don't you think that, just maybe, some teachers take sick days just because they have them - and not because they are really necessary?

 

The responsibility of raising children (at least for now - in the US) remains the parents' --- and that includes choosing schools, or home schooling, and even electing an occasional day or so away from school.

[rockdoctor]

Some school districts have absence limits for promotion to the next grade. Better check your's. Where I live all absences for all causes are added up.

[soccerref]

We are cruising to the Carribean on the 25th and taking our son out of school. He's in the 5th grade and we have never taken a vacation during the school year but the deal we got on this 7 night cruise was crazy and we were not going to miss it.

I did tell his teachers and they are all giving him assignments, albeit it will be cruise friendly. His geography teacher is planning something special.

We will be driving from Va to Miami and then the 7 night cruise, driving back and they have 2 days out for a teachers workday and a weekend in there too, so he will only miss 4 days.

A cruise is VERY educational. Have fun! The memories will last a lifetime.

 

I do hope you give your son's teachers some credit for creating assignments for him to do out of school. I was a teacher for 40 years and came across this expectation that I would provide work for pupils who were being taken on holiday during school time.

 

Parents do not realise that preparing separate work in advance is time consuming and then needs to be marked and graded too. The way my schools worked was to 'block' subject matter so that, for example, year 4 'fractions' would be taught intensively for 5 or 10 days. That meant that absent pupils missed whole chunks of very important concepts. When I explained this to parents I was regularly told, ''well, you can do catch-up with him/her in your break/lunch time''!

 

 

The most frustrating thing though was, having made great efforts to sort appropriate and relevant tasks for the pupil, that 90% was never done.....''oh, we've been far too busy to do it but you don't mind do you?'' Of course, I smiled sweetly but seathed silently, knowing the time and effort I had put in and how much I now needed to do to help the child to catch up.

 

Rant over...!!!

Edited January 6, 2015 by soccerref

[navybankerteacher]

Some school districts have absence limits for promotion to the next grade. Better check your's. Where I live all absences for all causes are added up.

 

That sounds like the product of a mindless beaurocracy - more interested in the student-per-diem-attendance allowance than in trying to educate. There are some bright, hard-working children who can, and do, learn more attending school half time than the inattentive, perhaps marginally challenged, child with perfect attendance who gets moved along via "social promotion".

[Cruisin' Chick]

Yes, if you want to read endless debates, go to the family forum here and do a search to pull up old threads on this tired subject. You will be amazed at the vast majority of posters on CC who have extremely gifted and talented children.

 

Many people do it, it's your choice.

 

I was part of a infamous thread about nine years ago that got very contentious. One guy who said his wife was a teacher kept calling any parent that would take their kids out of school for a cruise a bad parent. He was pretty nasty about it, too.

 

When our girl was in kindergarten, we got offered a friends and family discount on a cruise for mid-February. I knew one of her classmates had just gone to NYC with her parents for a week and another kid went to Disneyland for the day, so I figured we should go for it. I talked with the teacher ahead of time and she compiled the homework package for us (yes, homework in kindergarten:eek:). She actually did the work on the day she got back home, though. We were within driving distance so we didn't have to take extra time for travel.

 

Since then, schools in our district got very tough with school absences because of $$$$$. Each school got money based on each student/day. So one student out for five days would mean less money for the school.

 

The middle school that my girl used to go to (she's in 12th grade now) went very extreme starting this year. If a student misses seven days (whether excused for medical reasons or other reasons) in any of the three years, it could mean that they can't participate in graduation in 8th grade. Unfortunately, one end result with that policy (or any punitive or even rewarding system -- such as entering kids with perfect attendance into a pool for prizes) is that kids may go to school sick (or at least contagious) which puts other kids at risk. The funny thing about the schools in recent years is that they tell parents to schedule vacations during breaks, but then they want kids to do projects, even over summer, while off from school.

 

There are substitute teachers on standby and when a teacher is sick, or having a baby the world doesn't end. If the teacher wants to take time off, I don't see a problem with that.

 

Not just that, but often teachers aren't at school because they are taking part in on-going education for themselves. Especially when there's new programs (like Common Core) or computer systems (like the notorious one the LAUSD tried to implement this year -- epic fail). I know of several times when one of my daughter's teachers were out for just this reason over the years.

[LOVINCRUIZIN]

My kids are 9 and 13 and I DO NOT hesitate to take them out of school for 2 weeks each year for much needed vacation and family time.

 

Just because we all are not school teachers or school district workers, does not mean that we have to forego vacations because our work industries work on a different calendar cycle.

 

As long as they make up the work and their grades don't suffer - I am an avid supporter, and WILL be doing ti again next December:D

[navybankerteacher]

My kids are 9 and 13 and I DO NOT hesitate to take them out of school for 2 weeks each year for much needed vacation and family time.

 

Just because we all are not school teachers or school district workers, does not mean that we have to forego vacations because our work industries work on a different calendar cycle.

 

As long as they make up the work and their grades don't suffer - I am an avid supporter, and WILL be doing ti again next December:D

 

A supportive, interested parent who is involved with a child's education will do far more for the child - even if that interest involves taking the child out of school - than one who obeys all the rules and leaves everything to the school system, which has a financial, as much as an educational, interest in maintaining attendance levels.

[Hlitner]

There are certainly two general points of view (both with a lot of validity) on pulling kids out of school. In the USA, most children have school 180 days a year which leaves many other days (and weeks) without school. In many school districts it is illegal to pull kids out of school unless they have a valid excuse. Some school districts actually will authorize pulling kids out of school for some trips, and even cooperate with the assigning of school work. But other districts see any such absence as "unauthorized" and subject to truancy penalties.

 

One can certainly debate what message we send our youngsters when parents consistently pull them out of school at the parent's whim. Some might argue we are simply telling children that school is not very important, and personal desires trump personal responsibility. Does this mean that when the child grows up and gets a job, that they only go to work when they please and skip work whenever they have something else to do? DD, who is a manager for a large company, has employees (some now ex employees) who had this attitude, would routinely show-up to work late, or not bother coming at all.

 

This might make a great topic for one of the daytime television talk shows.

 

Hank

[LOVINCRUIZIN]

I agree with much of what you say. But I am talking about pulling them out once a year for a meaningful vacation. I am not condoning being irresponsible and "consistently" pulling them out, or pulling them out on a "whim".

 

Some of what your DD is experiencing in the workplace, I am also experiencing. I believe this is a general trend in this "entitlement" age. And I am parenting my kids in many ways so they DO NOT develope that attitude.

 

Call Maury (or whoever runs those shows these days ;)) (I wouldn;t know, I am at WORK:p )

[stones902]

My wife and I used to argue about this all the time. We finally agreed to disagree. I personally believe the family time with kids is worth more than what they would learn in school during the week, my wife thinks the time off would set them back too far.

 

Only you know your kids. Take your pick.

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[LOVINCRUIZIN]

What a timely topic!

 

I took my kids out for two weeks in December, as I always do. I notified the school in advance, and my kids got their assignments to take along. My daughter is now in 7th grade, and is in honor's classes and on the elite principal's honor roll.

 

She did all of her work, and is actually ahead now, as they didn't get as much done in class while we were away.

 

Yet, yesterday I got a letter in the mail from the 7th grade "team" warning me that attendance is important and to speak to my daughter about the importance of good attendance. Now, I explained in my notice to them in November that I understand that they all don't agree with my position, and I assured them that the work would be done. Did they really need to send a threatening letter :confused:

[declansdad]

What a timely topic!

 

I took my kids out for two weeks in December, as I always do. I notified the school in advance, and my kids got their assignments to take along. My daughter is now in 7th grade, and is in honor's classes and on the elite principal's honor roll.

 

She did all of her work, and is actually ahead now, as they didn't get as much done in class while we were away.

 

Yet, yesterday I got a letter in the mail from the 7th grade "team" warning me that attendance is important and to speak to my daughter about the importance of good attendance. Now, I explained in my notice to them in November that I understand that they all don't agree with my position, and I assured them that the work would be done. Did they really need to send a threatening letter :confused:

 

 

You really see that as threatening?

[LOVINCRUIZIN]

I see it as unnecessary, given the circumstances. And I am not "threatened" by it (a bad choice of words on my part), but it did include some pretty strong remarks.

[Dymt]

What a timely topic!

 

I took my kids out for two weeks in December, as I always do. I notified the school in advance, and my kids got their assignments to take along. My daughter is now in 7th grade, and is in honor's classes and on the elite principal's honor roll.

 

She did all of her work, and is actually ahead now, as they didn't get as much done in class while we were away.

 

Yet, yesterday I got a letter in the mail from the 7th grade "team" warning me that attendance is important and to speak to my daughter about the importance of good attendance. Now, I explained in my notice to them in November that I understand that they all don't agree with my position, and I assured them that the work would be done. Did they really need to send a threatening letter :confused:

 

 

I always take my kids out of school for vacations and do my best to coordinate with the school. I have three kids and have been doing this for years. Without fail, every single year, if we get close to that eight day limit, I get a form letter kicked out to me with the same type of text as you mentioned. I think it's a computer generated thing in these days of high technology and not something to get worried about or be offended by. It's not personal . . . just something the district requires.

 

Incidentally, I have two children who require frequent doctor's visits. You have no idea how many notes I get! It's never been a problem and they're always very accommodating. Like you, I just prepare and like your daughter, they keep up. No biggie.

 

DYMT

 

 

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