When Do You Stop Taking Kids Out of School

I know this is an ongoing discussion and every family is different. We just returned from an amazing cruise on Allure of the Seas in April and took our kids out of school for a week. Our DS is in grade 5 and our DD is in grade 1. We're getting to a point where we are not comfortable taking our DS out of school anymore. But then of course we're stuck to Christmas or March break (which is $$$ plus very busy) or summer (which is also $$$ and very hot/hurricane season). For cruising, crowds probably don't matter since the ships fill up anyways, but for something like Disney World or Land (which we are also considering), crowds make a big difference.

Just wondering about other families. Do you continue to take your kids out of school? Or maybe you never did? Or if you did but not longer, when is your cut off?

DD starts kindergarten next year. While we would be comfortable taking her out occasionally for travel in the early school years, we could face disciplinary action since it is considered an un excused absence. So, I guess this year (pre-k) was our last time.

We stopped after a cruise we took when DS was in 7th Grade. He was in middle school basketball and was penalized by the coach for missing a pre-season game by benching him and taking him off the starting line at the beginning of the season. Realize that we booked this trip long before he joined the school basketball team. He asked us not to cruise during the school year because of that and because the make up work was becoming much harder to do as he got older. Not that he couldn't do it, but he didn't like having to do it. I think this a personal decision that each family needs to make based on their school district rules, and their own kids willingness and ability to make up the work. We stopped when our son was no longer willing to do it.

Mine are in private school so you can only miss so many days without consequence. As a result, I have never taken them out for a week long cruise - and as a result, I do not travel the more expensive lines like Disney and RCI. We have consistently found that Carnival and Princess meet our needs and allow us to cruise within a reasonable budget. Also, because they are in private school we are lucky that they have 2 weeks at Christmas and an early March spring break. We are able to get a balcony for us, even at holiday time (go BEFORE Christmas) for around $800 pp and an inside for the boys around $500 pp.

One is now ready to graduate and the other finishing 6th grade and at this point, missing a week of school would be a nightmare with all the work he would have to make up.

My advice - pick another cruise line!

I think this is really a play by ear type of thing and there is not one answer for a family or even a child. My daughter was fine missing time up until high school and she could easily make up any time missed. We took a long weekend (she missed 1 1/2 days) and asked us not to do that anymore as she missed too much in her sophomore year. My son on the other hand (who was younger fortunately) was struggling to make up the work at a much younger age.

Things to consider, your school policies, the classes your kids are taking, how they are doing in those, and any extracurricular activities they are in that might be impacted. It's a tough choice and we ended up biting the bullet and traveling in early summer (often leaving the day after school ended) to get a little better deal. Now they are both older (one is married) and still love to travel with us, especially is we are footing the bill!

My kids are both good students so they can make up a week of missed school without difficulty. They are also in a private school and the teacher's work with them to get caught up on missed assignments. Our last cruise Nov/15 - my daughter's grade 4 teacher gave her a packet of math assignments to do daily. She could have done them on the holiday but she chose to do a week's worth of math when we returned - her choice.

You have to look at whether the child excels at school or if it is a struggle to keep up. If the week away does them more harm them good, then they should not be pulled out of school.

The greater issue for us is commitments to sports teams. Coaches don't like it when you take off for a week and miss games and practices. This will be our last winter holiday this November and we will be forced to cruise outside of hockey season :(

I think the answer to your question is it's time to stop taking them out of school, when the week away holds them back and they fall behind.

Thanks for the replies. Every family is different. Interesting that some of you get penalized for missing school. Our school doesn't, but it's more a matter of missing work. My kids are good students but I think it'll be hard on them as they get older to catch up. My kids aren't on any team activities (my DS takes karate but each kid is on their own schedule and DD takes dance). I can see how that would be hard though if you are committed to a team and then you miss.

So for those that no longer take them out, when do you find is the best time to cruise? Christmas, March/Spring break or summer?

Thanks for the replies. Every family is different. Interesting that some of you get penalized for missing school. Our school doesn't, but it's more a matter of missing work. My kids are good students but I think it'll be hard on them as they get older to catch up. My kids aren't on any team activities (my DS takes karate but each kid is on their own schedule and DD takes dance). I can see how that would be hard though if you are committed to a team and then you miss.

 

So for those that no longer take them out, when do you find is the best time to cruise? Christmas, March/Spring break or summer?

Well if your daughter is in dance and competing like mine did, we didn't do any cruising in Spring which was prime dance competition time. We actually ended up doing Summer (after dance nationals) and Christmas breaks.

My oldest will be in 5th grade next year and we are doing one last blowout pull out of school vacation - a disney cruise and a few days at Disney World. I have pulled my kids out every year, a couple of years it was 2x a year when we already had something preplanned and another opportunity came up (wedding and an all expenses paid trip, not turning it down so kid could make it to 3 more days of 2nd grade lol) and it's always been fine, but once we get to middle school it's going to be off the table, just too much work to make up.

I try to plan around a 3 or 4 day week but it's not always possible if the school calendar isn't out yet. When we booked the disney cruise the day they released them I spent quite a bit of time pouring over 5 years of school calendars trying to predict which week they'd have two days off, unfortunately I guessed wrong, but oh well.

This year my kids missed 3 days to go on vacation in September which isn't much but they have missed a ton of days for being sick this year too! My oldest has had more sick days this year than she has in all her other years in school combined. Hoping it's a fluke and won't happen again.

Once she's in middle school I'll be ok with adding 1-2 days onto a long weekend, but that's it. High School we'll have to see what the workload is like. It's tough, we vacation to Disney every year and we are spoiled by going in the off season.

We stopped in High School...too much "make up" work from that point on.

Well if your daughter is in dance and competing like mine did, we didn't do any cruising in Spring which was prime dance competition time. We actually ended up doing Summer (after dance nationals) and Christmas breaks.

The dance my daughter takes isn't competitive. They just have a recital in June which we wouldn't want to miss but otherwise not an issue from that point.

The dance my daughter takes isn't competitive. They just have a recital in June which we wouldn't want to miss but otherwise not an issue from that point.

Just fair warning if she starts competing like DD did it takes a big chunk of your time (and money). DD did as your DD is doing from ages 3-6. She started competing at 7 until just last year when she graduated HS. I wouldn't change a thing because it taught her team work, dedication, determination, time management, prioritization, commitment, and so much more. It has also given her a great boost in her self-esteem and self-confidence. But it is a great commitment on the part of the parents/family as well as the dancer. But she loved it and it was worth it to us. She just finished her first year of college and joined the university dance troupe. A wonderful decision for her. She got to continue dancing and will be trying her hand at choreography next year and she made a lot of new friends on campus with a similar passion to hers.

Sports are just one more thing to consider when booking your vacations as your kids get older and get more involved in the sports they love. It becomes a much bigger part of your lives as it becomes more competitive and less recreational and it becomes difficult to add dance, soccer, basketball (our sports schedules) to your already set schedule of work and school to try to fit in those vacations. But it is worth the vacation when you can squeeze it in. We found a lot of cruises ended up being 5 day ones when the kids were in middle and high school just so we could squeeze them in.

We pulled ours out twice for week-long vacations. The first time they were 10, 7, and 3. Both of the school-aged kids had great teachers who were supportive of our family time and we were very glad we did it because early October turned out to be a fantastic time to go to WDW and a DCL cruise.

The second time they were 12, 9, and 5 (6th, 3rd, and pre-k) and we traveled in February. Again, everything was fine with schoolwork and teachers.

None of them were involved in extra-curricular activities that required attendance during that period of time, so it all worked out well.

We decided after that it would be too difficult, with the oldest going into middle school, so that was the last time we did it. Now that they are older (two in high school, youngest in 5th), I miss those carefree days. Not only can we not take them out of school to travel, we cannot even travel during school breaks because of sports. Family vacations are limited strictly to summer. A few summers ago my DD was playing AAU basketball, so even traveling in the summer was tough with tournaments every other weekend.

So while it is obviously a very personal decision, I do recommend considering it if there won't be any major repercussions, because once the time has passed, there is no going back.

We took ours out twice. Once when the girls were in 4th/1st and then again when the youngest was a junior in high school.

The first trip we had to extend the time out of school because the district only allowed independent study for absences no shorter than 5 days. The second was for a two week trip to Rome.

For the assignments, we copied the necessary pages. Books are extremely heavy to schlep and expensive to replace. The only issue we had was with the Internet. DD couldn't access the teacher's assignment page. A quick email rectified the situation.

Thanks for the replies. Every family is different. Interesting that some of you get penalized for missing school. Our school doesn't, but it's more a matter of missing work. My kids are good students but I think it'll be hard on them as they get older to catch up. My kids aren't on any team activities (my DS takes karate but each kid is on their own schedule and DD takes dance). I can see how that would be hard though if you are committed to a team and then you miss.

 

So for those that no longer take them out, when do you find is the best time to cruise? Christmas, March/Spring break or summer?

I avoid summer. I think the rates are highest and we live in SE VA so have a beach accessible. I want to cruise when the weather here stinks. The week before Christmas has been only higher than a "normal" spring break week for us in Early March, and we have made the transition to that week as my son will start college next year and his spring break will not necessarily always line up. Cruises may still happen at spring break but we will play those by ear. For now, pre-Christmas is officially our family cruise time.

Best time to cruise? This would partially depend on your destination and where you live relative to that area. i would rate Christmas as the worst time due to large number of people flying and high fares. Here in Southern Ca. there is a recent trend to starting school year in mid August and ending by Memorial day or early June. This opens the door to early June travel.

Some schools in upscale areas close for week on Presidents day or Martin Luther King day due to students bailing out to ski.

We totally forgot our daughter was going to be in school (K) when we booked our Nov 16 11 day cruise from NYC to Miami on the new Carnival Vista. (OOPS) It's been booked since about 3 days after bookings opened.

I have no idea how her teacher or the school district will work with us (or not) so this is going to be a real.... interesting .... event.

We leave NYC on a Wed. We're going to go up on Sunday so she'll miss 2 weeks. It is over Thanksgiving, so she will only end up missing 7.5 days - not a full 10. That's something, I guess.

I'm crossing my fingers they aren't too upset and I'm not getting us in trouble right off.

My kids will be in 12th and 8th grade next school year.

Currently they were both suppose to be missing the last 3 1/2 days of school for our cruise in June. (11th and 7th grade).

As a matter of fact, I would still take them out of school IF I could. It isn't a matter of them not wanting to make up the work, or sports or anything like that though.

Here is my story as to why I can't take them out of school:

3 years ago, we took them out of school for a total of them missing 7 days for a cruise. Then because you know, life always happens with kids and sick days and such (Esp if you have a school district that tells you to keep them out of school 24 hrs after a fever :rolleyes:) my youngest missed an additional 8 days that winter (he got pneumonia) and my oldest missed about 3 more.

My school district has the stupidest policies in place for absences. Anything over 7 for the whole school year, has to have a doctors excuse. A doctors excuse is also not allowed to be for more than 2 days in a row, mean for my son's pneumonia, we would have had to go to the doctors an additional 5 times with co-pays just to get excuses for him.

This leads me to believe that it really isn't a parents choice anymore if they want to take their kids on vacation during the school year. I mean when I was growing up, we all missed school for vacations weeks at a time. One of my friends was a big hunter, he missed for deer season, trout season, and every year he and his father would take a 10 day trip at the start of moose season. Things like this weren't an issue 20 years ago, but today they really are!

This is just a word of caution to make sure of how your school district handles absences before you give yourself a giant headache, and end up having to spend the money cruising out of season saved you on silly fines! Unless your kids never get sick, or you don't mind sending them to school sick and picking them up in a few hours when they send them home, read threw everything the schools give you!

We took our 3rd grader out this year, but that was the last time, unfortunately. The Common Core standards are very aggressive. Our school is high-performing with a take-no-prisoners attitude toward standardized testing. I am not a fan of teaching for the test, but it's reality, and I am now resigned to it. Missing a week of school is not a good idea at this point. BTW, we have February and April vacation but prefer March. Anyway, individual decision. I judge no one. But, this is where our family stands at this point.

Believe the risk would be greater in June than during the year, especially for children in middle or high school. There are usually year end tests and special awards or sports affairs. For those in cold climates there is the risk of "snow days" being added.

Learning a lot from this thread. My DD is only 3 so I've got a while before I really need to worry about this. I'm surprised that there are penalties from schools if you miss days! IMO I wouldn't stop doing it until High School at which point I think the make up work would get to be too much.

I will say this with regards to costs. For DD on March break we will need to put her in a camp. That will cost us $. Is that really more money to put her in camp for that week and cruise "off season"? I don't know. I think it might be a break even sort of thing. We live in an expensive city so camps and that stuff are fairly pricy!

Learning a lot from this thread. My DD is only 3 so I've got a while before I really need to worry about this. I'm surprised that there are penalties from schools if you miss days! IMO I wouldn't stop doing it until High School at which point I think the make up work would get to be too much.

It does depend on the district. DS starts kindergarten this fall and I was pleasantly surprised to see them specify in the handbook that travel is an excused absence. There's even a sentence about the value of travel to the child. This is a public school district in a rural area.

It does depend on the district. DS starts kindergarten this fall and I was pleasantly surprised to see them specify in the handbook that travel is an excused absence. There's even a sentence about the value of travel to the child. This is a public school district in a rural area.

Good to hear. I remember being out of school for a week as kid to go to the Olympics. I wouldn't hesitate to take my kid out for travel. I hope our school board is as open minded!

In many states and districts, school funding is not based solely on enrollment in the school. It is based on enrollment less absences. This is based on the assumption by the money folks that if the student is not in class, then the teacher doesn't have to teach them. While in reality, the make up work and gathering assignments before and or after can place an extra burden on the teacher's time. It is because of this funding issue that you can run into issues and penalties being levied.

Good points made by bethco. Here in Ca., most of the funding for schools comes from the state, it is called ADA funds. State provides a certain amount for each student. If student is absent, district loses money for that day. Unlikely, you will receive any encouragement to withdraw your child for travel.Ultimately, the decision is yours to make perhaps, with some imput from the teacher. Probably, easier to arrange when child is in elementary school than when in higher grades.