Religious Holidays in Public Schools

[Soon]

Originally Posted by adorable

I voted "I don't care" and I really don't care about holidays although I celebrate the ones where gifts or chocolate is involved.

My experience with public schools has been that they have certain times off a year - they don't refer to them currently by the Christian name, everything is a "holiday" but not defined. Kids who celebrate other religions are allowed to take off from school without a penalty.

Even if I wanted to pull my kids out of school for a random vacation for a week during the school year I can and they'll still pass.

One thing I think that I would like to see happen is a year round school year. I know as a home owner I pay school taxes, and that they would go up. I would rather pay more for my kids to go to school year round then I would to have to send them to camp for the summer. I was lucky that when my oldest was young enough for camp (and I was a poor single mother going to college & working as a waitress) that I found one sponsored by the little town that we lived in that cost $15 a week!!!!!! I was so lucky. I didn't have the money to send her to camp otherwise. That camp of course no longer exists.

This year, my youngest daughters camp cost me over $1200 for five weeks. (She does the fair thing with 4-H during the other weeks) so my expense was actually lower then what lots of other people have to shell out. I only had to pay for her, what on earth do people do that have more then one kid? Or that can't afford between $160 - $250 a week?? Normally that is paid up front. Even $300 is more then some people can afford to spend to replace a car, much less send their kids to camp. I'm lucky today to be able to afford it. I honestly have no idea what some other families do.

Yet, they have to go to work. The kids have to go somewhere. Preferably a safe somewhere and not home alone. There are daycare subsidies here for people who work that can't afford daycare expenses, but nothing like that for camp. The daycare's are generally full. Year round schooling wouldn't hurt kids at all and would help out parents, especially the working poor.

Hi Adorable,

From what I have read--even with year round schooling--there are still significant breaks throughout the school year where parents would need to find alternative means of supervision for their children.

In year round schooling, breaks range from 2 weeks spread throughout the year to 3-5 weeks for summer.



This calendar shows 3 breaks of 15 days off in b/w 45-30 days of learning and 1 break (summer) of 30 days. With either system, parents will need to find care for their children during the days away from school and, in fact, with the balanced (year round) system, I would think they would need to find more alternative means of supervision throughout the course of the year (as opposed to a chunk in the summer).

According to this article, year round schooling doesn't add more learning days to the (180 typical school days) calendar, they just spread the breaks more evenly thoughout the school year:

Instead of a three-month summer vacation, year-round schools typically have several breaks of three to four weeks spread throughout the year. The total number of school days and vacation days remains unchanged, but they are distributed more evenly over the calendar.


So, no matter what schedule, parents will still be responsible for finding and/or paying for adequate supervision for their children at various points throughout the year. I wonder--isn't that their responsibility anyway--as parents?