Do you take kids out of School to Travel?

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

LOL at Canadians vacationing in Disney, Vegas, Hawaii, Cancun etc. and crapping on Americans.

A great Canadian tradition

[Strange Brew]

We did not ever take the kids out of school for extended periods for a vacation. Just couldn't rationalize that they "needed the break" since the school year is maybe 8 months long once you factor in summer and all the other extended holidays.

Definitely made exceptions for certain family situations but if it was a trip that we could do when they were out of school, that is when we did it. Traveling in summer is definitely more expensive, so that was just something we accepted. And for whatever reason, our kids always hated missing school too even at a very young age.

[Sr. Mints]

My dad took us on business trips a few times a year. We'd miss a few days, a week or here and there. I think seeing the the world (and even sitting in lobbies waiting for my dad in a lobby somewhere, hanging out in a hotel for the day) or venturing out on our own when we were older was worth infinitely more than school. The destinations were quite mundane: Victoria, Ottawa, Boston, Regina, Plano Tx, that sort of thing. Larger trips were usually bundled with family holidays during the summers, Christmas, etc.

My older brother and I could not care less about school at the time, for what its worth. Scraping by with a 52% in grade 10 math was considered a win (much to my mom's hair-pulling.)

[bagofpucks]

My mom was a teacher, so definitely no traveling during the school year for us when I was a kid. Our oldest is in kindergarten, so we are just starting to think about this as well. We’ll be going to Disneyland in December and tried to book it so she would miss as little time as possible, but of course her schedule changed. When the kids were in day home it was amazing the jumps in cost as soon as school breaks hit, so I totally get why parents do it. With how much the cost of flights, food and hotels has increased I’m not expecting this to be an issue for our household as I don’t think we’ll be able to go on many week long trips for financial reasons.

[spetch]

Originally Posted by SportsJunky

Hey, we are going to Epcot, too. That's like travelling the globe.

Exactly, gotta try the "local" drinks from each country to really immerse ourselves in the culture (One day on a DW trip sans kids I'm gonna give the drinking around the world a try).

As for taking them out of school I'm ok with it too at the younger ages, as a long as they are reasonable strong students. If a student was struggling with school I would defiantly plan a trip around the breaks versus missing school.

[you&me]

Our school used to have a strict policy discouraging travel outside of designated breaks, which with two weeks at spring break and usually a few extra days at Christmas and an early start to the summer, wasn't the end of the world.

That policy - along with others since COVID - has been relaxed and this year we're going to take our "Christmas holiday" in about a month... The biggest factor in our decision is due to the unfortunate way the dates fall for the official days off, but it sure is nice to know that everything will be quieter and cheaper!

At this point, school isn't serious enough for my younger kids, and the older ones are doing well enough that I'm not worried about them staying on top of things, or catching up when they're back. There's definitely an intangible educational benefit to travel that sitting in a classroom simply can't provide... Even if that travel is to Disney World or an all-inclusive in Cancun

[FlamesAddiction]

We have never taken the kid out of school to travel, nor did my parents even take us out of school to travel. Not that I am necessarily against it, but it was always more of an economic choice and was never within our budget.

[KTrain]

We did it for the first time earlier this year but it's because my wife is a teacher and she was on a year sabbatical. We never get to take vacations when it isn't peak time (expensive) so we pulled the kids from school for a couple weeks and went to Italy and France. Saved us a few thousand dollars not going when everyone else was.

[Strange Brew]

If you’re going to do it, has to be when they’re young. But travel sports is the other consideration. Seems like my son was on a travel hockey team starting very young. So your weekends are already full of travel during the school year and of course they don’t want to miss that.

I guess it’s the ultimate YMMV. But if we’re honest with ourselves, you’re taking them out of school for a trip because it’s either cheaper or more convenient for you. If you can’t afford to do it during typical school breaks, then it would kind of suck for your young kids to miss out and so I totally get it.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Sr. Mints

Scraping by with a 52% in grade 10 math was considered a win (much to my mom's hair-pulling.)

[Dentoman]

Done it twice with 3 kids for 23 days at a time. First time - kids in Grade 6,4,2 and second time Grade 10, Grade 8 and Grade 6. First trip had some school break time included, second time none. Absolutely no regrets. Kids brought some assignments and submitted them online. Some teachers gave them stuff to do and some didn’t. Some were upset, some weren’t. Didn’t care, it was well worth it

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

When did the change the calendar to include the fall break? It was posted in March when I booked our trip and I think the schedule was up earlier than that because I was planning for a least a month trying to figure out what we should do and where we should go.

Dec 15, 2022. Their previous practice was to approve a new calendar for the upcoming year in the fall. So they approved a 2023-2024 calendar in September 2022, then changed it Dec 2022. I booked the trip on question a year out (Oct 2022).

I'm actually more annoyed they don't have a tentative calendar for next year. I'd like to book something for fall 2024 while I can get good availability for award flights, but if they're having a fall break anyway I'd really like to book it during that break.

They used to publish tentative schedules a couple of years out, which was nice.

[DownInFlames]

I tried to but since I’m not a parent I was met with resistance.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

I tried to but since I’m not a parent I was met with resistance.

And I kept telling you...

"Where did you get these Children?"

Is not an unreasonable question from Customs officials.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

I tried to but since I’m not a parent I was met with resistance.

You went down in flames?

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Dentoman

Done it twice with 3 kids for 23 days at a time. First time - kids in Grade 6,4,2 and second time Grade 10, Grade 8 and Grade 6. First trip had some school break time included, second time none. Absolutely no regrets. Kids brought some assignments and submitted them online. Some teachers gave them stuff to do and some didn’t. Some were upset, some weren’t. Didn’t care, it was well worth it

Just shows how different each kid is. Either of our kids in grade 10 or 8 would have been devastated to be pulled out of school for that long, mainly because of athletics and extracurriculars. Glad that worked for your family.

[I_H8_Crawford]

Just did 2 weeks with my kids in the US and will be doing 6 weeks in Asia in the new year with them. They will learn far more on those 6 weeks then they will in school I bet.

No issues pulling them out, my deal is if they are getting good grades and no issues then we can do trips

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

Just shows how different each kid is. Either of our kids in grade 10 or 8 would have been devastated to be pulled out of school for that long, mainly because of athletics and extracurriculars. Glad that worked for your family.

I can see pre 8th or 9th grade being no big deal. My older son was taking a couple college level calc, economics and physics by 10th grade, and there is no way he was keeping up missing multiple weeks (plus he'd have been kicked out of dual enrollments classes for missing that much time). I am kind of shocked at these >2 weeks absences without much consequence. I feel a bit guilty for taking my 10th grader to out of town golf tournaments on a Thursday night during school, that are going towards building a college golf resume.

[malcolmk14]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I was really disappointed the CBE announced that so late - we already had a very non-refundable trip booked for last week, and absolutely would have done that week instead. They had an approved calendar for this school year already and changed it.

The lesson they seem to have learned is to not tell anyone anything in advance, because now they don't have a provisional calendar for next year. I'd like to know if they're going to do a fall break again.

The CBE Calendar for 2023-24 was released December 8th, 2022. Almost 9 months in advance. How early would you like them to announce it?

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by malcolmk14

The CBE Calendar for 2023-24 was released December 8th, 2022. Almost 9 months in advance. How early would you like them to announce it?

1 year before the start of school, which has historically been their practice.

In September of 2022 the "calendars" page of the CBE website flipped the calendar for the year starting Sept 2023 from "tentative" to "approved".

Then in December 2022 they changed it.

Now they have stopped providing year ahead calendars at all.

As an example, this wayback machine page from 2018 shows that tentative calendars were already available by then for the 2021-2022 school year. I'm not saying they need to have them for 3 years out, but I think 1 year out is reasonable.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180126...s/default.aspx