To Keep Home or Not To Keep Home: Tishrei Hollidays in Public Schools

[Anonymous]

This is our first PK year in a public school and we’re debating whether to keep PKer home for Sukkot/S.A./S.T.

In non- COVID years, we would probably keep her home and spend the first two days of Sukkot/S.A./S.T. mostly in synagogue, which we can’t do this year - we will have our own sukkah, and the shul is doing some outdoor services at 4 pm on the first day of S/S.T.

We attend a conservative synagogue, but do some minimal work on these holidays so it’s not an ideological hard “no” not to send her to school. If she were older - we would plan a lot of holiday related activities, but she’s a bit young beyond some songs and dancing with a mini-Torah.

She’s just settling into her routine at the school and the holidays feel so early this year, so not sure what to do here…

[Anonymous]

How observant are of the holidays? Most people in public schools are not familiar with the rest of the holidays in Tishrei. Will you pull her from school during pesach if spring break doesn’t align? What about shavout?

For preK, it’s not a big deal to keep her home and I would. You are sending the message that these holidays are important to us and we do things differently on these days. Even though shul is not fully open, you still can enjoy the holidays as a family.

The holidays were one of the reasons I enrolled my kids in Jewish preschools and they attend day schools. It’s a lot of days to miss once they get older. It’s also nice that there is a late start after Yom Kippur and early release on Purim.

[Anonymous]

We are not very religious and only keep our kids home for RH, YK, and the first two nights of Passover if needed.

I agree that a few days of preK doesn’t matter for anything so do what you want.

[Anonymous]

I think if you’re going to be gone anyways you should definitely pull her out school. These things are important and this is how you pass down your values. The only reason to keep her in school is if you needed the childcare to go into work or something like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think if you’re going to be gone anyways you should definitely pull her out school. These things are important and this is how you pass down your values. The only reason to keep her in school is if you needed the childcare to go into work or something like that.

Thanks, I think that this is where we are leaning. It's a public charter school with many Jewish teachers, so we always get RK/YK off and spring break aligns with Pesach. We would probably keep home for the first day of Shavuot, since we usually take that off.