How do all you DVC Members handle school?

[sgtdisney]

Originally posted by raidermatt
Trainfun has hit it right on the head in regards to the reality of the situation in the vast majority of cases. As they noted, there are exceptions to every rule...

Bottom line though, is it depends on the student, the parent and the school system. If your child is intelligent enough to miss 5 days at school, make up the work and still excel, who is to say the parent is bad parent for taking them out of school anyway. To imply, and I am not saying you or trainfun did this, that a parent is a bad parent simply because they take their kids out of school for a vacation is laughable. Too each his own. There are numerous reasons to pull a kid out of school and as long as they aren't suffering for it, it is ultimately the parents decision.

 

[dianeschlicht]

No kids anymore, but when we did travel with children, we liked to do a few days at the end of Christmas break into the New Year. We also can do a week in October, and the kids only miss 2 days of school because of Teacher union conferences. Next year we will have 4 youngsters going with us in October.

 

[Sharper]

Originally posted by sgtdisney
Bottom line though, is it depends on the student, the parent and the school system. If your child is intelligent enough to miss 5 days at school, make up the work and still excel, who is to say the parent is bad parent for taking them out of school anyway. To imply, and I am not saying you or trainfun did this, that a parent is a bad parent simply because they take their kids out of school for a vacation is laughable. Too each his own. There are numerous reasons to pull a kid out of school and as long as they aren't suffering for it, it is ultimately the parents decision.

Most of the time, the child WILL suffer for it. Intelligence has little or nothing to do with it. It rarely matters if the child is capable of catching up the missing work. I think most schools feel that there are enough opportunities for vacation during school breaks, so they are not willing to go to the extra effort to accommodate students vacationing whenever they wish.

The problems range from the added difficulty for the teacher to do his/her job trying to ensure that they give a vacationing student all missed work and instruction; further, the child will not only miss the lessons for a week but many teachers would be understandably annoyed that they pay the price for a child's unexcused absence, more with the parent than child, but the child might well feel uncomfortable after his/her return. I think a child missing school for vacation and not suffering any consequences would be the exception rather than the norm.

 

[AZKathy]

We used to take a week off in the fall when my oldest was young, but when he entered the higher elementary grades, we stopped that. Now, we leave the day after school gets out in May and do WDW in May and early June. I don't feel comfortable taking the kids out of school anymore, so we just suffer with the heat and enjoy ourselves at the water parks more! Honestly, I have not found the crowds horrible during the time we go, either.