President's Week - Do a lot of schools around the country get it off?

[JimmyV]

Sorry if I was confusing. In NY, they usually get President's week off in February (the week that includes President's Day), and the crowd calendars show high crowds that week, so I wasn't sure if "President's week" was purely a NY thing (and one can make the conclusion that NY schools getting a week off was enough to bump crowds up to a 8-9 level).

I have no interest in going that week but using it as a guide because I'm looking at the 2nd/3rd/4th weeks of April to book my trip and want to go with the lowest crowds.....

NY schools (the sample I looked at : some Long Island schools, NY schools, Albany schools) appear to be giving the last week of April off in 2016 rather than a week around Easter, as previously has been done. The crowd calendars show 4/5/6's for that week as of now, and rates I've looked at are lower than mid-April... so I'm wondering: 1. Are hotels and the crowd calendars out of the loop and haven't adjusted for this new, rare end-of-April week off in NY or 2. Is NY state not a big enough factor to make the crowds jump?

OK. Here's the scoop. President's Week is somewhat unique to the Northeast, not just NY. It can be found throughout all of all of New England, NY, NJ and PA. It is also a vacation week in other places, but the heaviest concentrations of school districts that have the whole week off can be found in the states I mentioned. As a result, WDW gets very crowded that week as many people use that week to either go skiing, take a cruise, or go to WDW. If you vacation in any of these manners during that week, crowds will be high and you will see Red Sox caps and Yankees caps everywhere you turn. But as I mentioned, there is a trend to scale back the vacation week, turning it in to a 3 or 4 day weekend. This isn't happening everywhere by any means, as evidenced by the fact that many have reported in this thread that they still get the whole week off.

Now, moving on to April, (and here is where it gets complex). Easter moves around each year. It can be as early as March 22 and as late as April 25. Why does that matter? Easy. School districts that continue to get the whole week off for President's Week tend to have a "set" week for April vacation. Otherwise, if they linked their next vacation week to whenever Easter falls, it would be possible to have two vacation weeks too close together. For example, you could end up with a week off in the third week of February and then another week off at the end of March. Instead of doing it this way, many districts set their April vacation firmly and keep it there. Many do this in the third week of April. Some in the second week of April. And some in the last week of April. But the third week of April tends to be the most common. Sometimes this aligns with Easter and many times it does not. Again, if you go to WDW in the third week of April in a year when Easter was in March or early April, you will think that you have transported yourself to Faneuil Hall or Times Square. The crowds are heavily loaded with New England, NY, NJ and PA guests. But if the third week of April coincides with Easter, then you will see a more broad-based crowd, since most schools will be off that week. And this is why there is no real such thing as a "Spring Break" week. You have school districts that have "never heard of President's Week". Many of them get just the Federal Holiday on Monday off, and they might have a vacation week in March. Or early April. Or mid-April. Or whenever Easter falls. So the school districts that don't have a President's Week vacation have a break that can be spread out all the way from March 10 to April 30. And the school districts that do have a President's Week vacation will likely have an April week off, anywhere between April 7 and April 30**. So no matter when you go to WDW in March or April, you are going to run in to Spring Breakers. But the heaviest concentration will almost always be the week leading up to Easter, the week after Easter, and the second and third weeks of April. And if Easter falls during the second or third weeks of April, watch out. That is when the calendar aligns to bring the tightest packed crowds of all. Make sense?

**And yes, there are exceptions of course. So don't bother with the "But our school district does it differently" posts. There will always be exceptions. But what I posted above is the "general rule" of how school calendars work.

 

[staceyrhood]

Here in Osceola Co. (next to Disney) we are off Friday the 19 for a long weekend that week. The parks will be busy all week.

 

[powellrj]

Around here it has become a flex day. The kids have it off if they don't "owe" any snow days, otherwise they just have one day off.

 

[Madame]

Can someone please explain the make-up weather days to me. We are in Ontario - fairly close to the Detroit border. They often have snow days when we do not, then they have to make the days up. Sometimes on week-ends . As a teacher & a parent this sounds like purgatory!!!

Our schools very rarely close. We had 1 this year & before that the last school closure we had was 4 years before. Even when the schools close an administrator (likely the principal) must report to the school - even if it takes 3 hours to get there to ensure no student has been inadvertently dropped off.

On our snow days (we are much more likely to have fog days) busses don't run, but ALL teachers report for work & parents are free to drop their student(s) at school for the day. Snow days are determined by the bus companies (& if you are in a city school like I was you are out of luck because city busses rarely stop running - one day it took me 3 hours to drive my usual 40 min route to school ).

So what's the deal with the crazy make-up days? How in the world can you ever plan vacations?!? Especially if you are in a state where you can't legally pull your child out of school. Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks for answering. I've just always been curious

 

[Jennytoon]

Can someone please explain the make-up weather days to me. We are in Ontario - fairly close to the Detroit border. They often have snow days when we do not, then they have to make the days up. Sometimes on week-ends . As a teacher & a parent this sounds like purgatory!!!

Our schools very rarely close. We had 1 this year & before that the last school closure we had was 4 years before. Even when the schools close an administrator (likely the principal) must report to the school - even if it takes 3 hours to get there to ensure no student has been inadvertently dropped off.

On our snow days (we are much more likely to have fog days) busses don't run, but ALL teachers report for work & parents are free to drop their student(s) at school for the day. Snow days are determined by the bus companies (& if you are in a city school like I was you are out of luck because city busses rarely stop running - one day it took me 3 hours to drive my usual 40 min route to school ).

So what's the deal with the crazy make-up days? How in the world can you ever plan vacations?!? Especially if you are in a state where you can't legally pull your child out of school. Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks for answering. I've just always been curious

Well, this is one of those things that varies a lot by area. But I'll say right off, no matter how they do it yes, as a parent it can make things tricky. I'll try to give a good summary of the variables.

Days excused for weather:
-- As you note you may have fog days; in the US as well there are different reasons for school closure due to weather; in the Northeast where I live we've had two school closures for hurricane days in my entire memory, but in Florida it happens with some frequency.

-- The standard most often given is that schools close for weather only if it is unsafe for staff or students to travel to the school. So either it is safe for the buses to drive them, and they do, or else it is not safe and then it isn't really safe for you to get in your car to drive around and drop them off either, nor for any of the teachers to risk life and limb to be there to watch them. Thus closed = entire school is closed, no one is there. That said, each area interprets "safe to travel to the school" differently. Lots of factors come into this decision, including

• the ability of individual towns to clear snow and maintain roads during a weather event (based on their budget and equipment)
  
  
• socio-political factors; I grew up in NYC and they try very hard not to close schools there because there are many children who depend on the school lunch programs for a solid meal each day.
  
  
• and of course, one must take into account the relative ability of the region to handle the particular weather they are given. A half-inch of snow in Huntsville, AL will cause many, many more accidents than three inches of snow in the Northeast. We snicker a bit when they close schools for a half-inch of snow, but it really is dangerous for them to go out and drive around in it. Even if one individual knows how to handle the weather and can drive safely, there's no guarantee about the car before or behind them.

It should be noted that there is often a conflict between when employers believe that workplaces should be closed for weather and when schools believe that they should be closed for weather. This can be problematic, and some districts / regions will make a closing decision earlier than they need to (and it then turns out to have been unnecessary) in order to give parents time to make arrangements for care.

Handling of days excused for weather:
-- Different districts or schools handle weather days differently; the major issue is that public schools are constrained to a specific minimum number of days per year, and many are constrained by union agreements to a maximum number of days per year or drop-dead end dates for school (not past July 1, etc.). There are two major methods used to handle weather days:

• Mid-year adjustments where a planned break is either shortened or eliminated entirely due to weather. This does indeed make it difficult to plan for vacations over a break. A snarky person would say this is why you should always buy travel insurance, but in truth I think it is more often the case that there are a lot of absences in school during the vacation days that are removed, and everyone just deals with it.
  
  
• End-of-year adjustments, which is what we do where I live. There are five extra days built into the school year from Day 1 and the last day is usually a Wednesday or Thursday, which sounds cracked until you realize what happens. What happens is that the last week of school always requires an abnormal arrangement from a childcare perspective. BUT, if there are one or two extra days, they can just be tacked on to the end without overrunning into the next week and school will still end the same week which enables all the camps to count on a firm start date and school to still be over before the union drop-dead date. If there are one or two fewer days, school ends earlier but again, still in the same week which was already a pain from a childcare perspective. With this method you can reliably plan for vacations over a break, and I know quite a few people whose arrangement for that annoying last week of the year is to plan vacations for that week. The reasoning there is that if you've got to take an unknown number of days off to watch your kids anyway, you might as well use your vacation days for vacation, and nobody is really learning anything that last few days of school anyway. This works up through high school when they schedule finals that week.

 

[IrishNYC]

Can someone please explain the make-up weather days to me. We are in Ontario - fairly close to the Detroit border. They often have snow days when we do not, then they have to make the days up. Sometimes on week-ends . As a teacher & a parent this sounds like purgatory!!!

Our schools very rarely close. We had 1 this year & before that the last school closure we had was 4 years before. Even when the schools close an administrator (likely the principal) must report to the school - even if it takes 3 hours to get there to ensure no student has been inadvertently dropped off.

On our snow days (we are much more likely to have fog days) busses don't run, but ALL teachers report for work & parents are free to drop their student(s) at school for the day. Snow days are determined by the bus companies (& if you are in a city school like I was you are out of luck because city busses rarely stop running - one day it took me 3 hours to drive my usual 40 min route to school ).

So what's the deal with the crazy make-up days? How in the world can you ever plan vacations?!? Especially if you are in a state where you can't legally pull your child out of school. Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks for answering. I've just always been curious

A school year, in most places, but for sure in NYC (I grew up in the system and worked there, and now have a child there), must be 180 school days. In NYC this year our school year will be 182 days total - that allows for 2 "free" snow days. The year Hurricane Sandy hit I believe we missed a full week of school, bringing the school year under 180, so they "made up" some of those days during President's Week. I believe it was shortened to just Monday and Tuesday that year. Or at least it was threatened to be shortened. My child wasn't in the public system yet, and our private pre-school closed both for the week after the storm and all of president's week, so it wasn't completely on my radar. But that's the gist of making up days. They either take away vacation days from somewhere, or make it up on weekends.

 

[Meriweather]

We get only the Monday off.

 

[dprincessmom]

And your kids are probably long done with school! I still have one more miserable week of making lunch.

Wow this is kind of eye opening...My DD starts August 12th and we are done May 19th for 2015/2016. We get the whole week of Thanksgiving this year (because we are losing 2 holidays in the spring the way Easter falls this year) and wait for it - we are out almost 3 full weeks at Christmas (Dec 17th-Jan 3rd I believe). We have already been out a full month!

 

[Madame]

Well, this is one of those things that varies a lot by area. But I'll say right off, no matter how they do it yes, as a parent it can make things tricky. I'll try to give a good summary of the variables.

Days excused for weather:
-- As you note you may have fog days; in the US as well there are different reasons for school closure due to weather; in the Northeast where I live we've had two school closures for hurricane days in my entire memory, but in Florida it happens with some frequency.

-- The standard most often given is that schools close for weather only if it is unsafe for staff or students to travel to the school. So either it is safe for the buses to drive them, and they do, or else it is not safe and then it isn't really safe for you to get in your car to drive around and drop them off either, nor for any of the teachers to risk life and limb to be there to watch them. Thus closed = entire school is closed, no one is there. That said, each area interprets "safe to travel to the school" differently. Lots of factors come into this decision, including

• the ability of individual towns to clear snow and maintain roads during a weather event (based on their budget and equipment)
  
  
• socio-political factors; I grew up in NYC and they try very hard not to close schools there because there are many children who depend on the school lunch programs for a solid meal each day.
  
  
• and of course, one must take into account the relative ability of the region to handle the particular weather they are given. A half-inch of snow in Huntsville, AL will cause many, many more accidents than three inches of snow in the Northeast. We snicker a bit when they close schools for a half-inch of snow, but it really is dangerous for them to go out and drive around in it. Even if one individual knows how to handle the weather and can drive safely, there's no guarantee about the car before or behind them.

It should be noted that there is often a conflict between when employers believe that workplaces should be closed for weather and when schools believe that they should be closed for weather. This can be problematic, and some districts / regions will make a closing decision earlier than they need to (and it then turns out to have been unnecessary) in order to give parents time to make arrangements for care.

Handling of days excused for weather:
-- Different districts or schools handle weather days differently; the major issue is that public schools are constrained to a specific minimum number of days per year, and many are constrained by union agreements to a maximum number of days per year or drop-dead end dates for school (not past July 1, etc.). There are two major methods used to handle weather days:

• Mid-year adjustments where a planned break is either shortened or eliminated entirely due to weather. This does indeed make it difficult to plan for vacations over a break. A snarky person would say this is why you should always buy travel insurance, but in truth I think it is more often the case that there are a lot of absences in school during the vacation days that are removed, and everyone just deals with it.
  
  
• End-of-year adjustments, which is what we do where I live. There are five extra days built into the school year from Day 1 and the last day is usually a Wednesday or Thursday, which sounds cracked until you realize what happens. What happens is that the last week of school always requires an abnormal arrangement from a childcare perspective. BUT, if there are one or two extra days, they can just be tacked on to the end without overrunning into the next week and school will still end the same week which enables all the camps to count on a firm start date and school to still be over before the union drop-dead date. If there are one or two fewer days, school ends earlier but again, still in the same week which was already a pain from a childcare perspective. With this method you can reliably plan for vacations over a break, and I know quite a few people whose arrangement for that annoying last week of the year is to plan vacations for that week. The reasoning there is that if you've got to take an unknown number of days off to watch your kids anyway, you might as well use your vacation days for vacation, and nobody is really learning anything that last few days of school anyway. This works up through high school when they schedule finals that week.

Thank-you so much for that detailed response! There has been talk here too about the dangers of forcing teachers to go into work during treacherous conditions & teachers have been killed.

We too have hard start & end dates, but the gov has the ability to override them (ie putting a professional development day the Thurs before Labour Day when school cannot begin until after LD).

That was a good point about weather-readiness & ability to respond - we live technically south of Detroit where Canada dips into Lake Erie (my town is the southernmost in Canada), so we don't get as much snow as others, but we have the infrastructure in place. Southern states unused to snow & ice & can't justify devoting a good chunk of their budget to an event that *may* happen, would have a hard time!

 

[cel_disney]

MA school vacations are Feb 15-19,2016 and April 18-22, 2016

NH school vacations are Feb 22-27, 2016 and April 18-22,2016

Generally February Presidents week is busy enough (I think actuals were 6-8s. The April week as long as it doesn't overlap with Easter (not usually the case), it's been manageable - crowds around a 4/5ss..

This year (2016) is strange though as MA and NH don't usually have the same holiday week in April...I have to assume that it will be busier than usual (especially airport travel getting there that week if both are the same!)

 

[charmed59]

My kids went to school in California where President's week, or ski week as they called it, was very popular amongst school districts in the SF bay area. This meant spring break happened in the spring, but had nothing to do with where Easter, Passover, Ramadan, or any other religious holiday happened that year.

Their school district year ran from mid to late August to mid June. And of course, these school districts did not have weather days.