Our elementary school was very supportive with traveling families- they even said so in their welcome email.

Our kids did miss school for vacations, mostly overseas, but we tried to tack on a day or two before or after an actual school break.

We did this through elementary school. Beyond that negotiating makeup work would have been a total pita. On the other hand, if there was something major like a wedding overseas it would have been possible to work something out with teachers to make things manageable.

I think the school just has to say that they discourage it. I don't think they actually care. They make one mention of it at Back to School Night (they discourage missing school for vacations) but nobody ever says anything, the teachers are happy to allow make up work, and when the report card comes they absences are always excused.

(I am one of the PP's who said they would stop in middle school, which for us is 6th grade.)

Anonymous wrote:Missing a week or a couple days here and there spread across the year simply isn't an issue. If it rises to the level of truancy, then it's an issue.

You must not live in diverse school districts. Tons of kids in our area miss weeks at a time to travel to Mexico, India, Nigeria, etc.

Same at our school. They go for several weeks. After seeing that - I didn't feel as bad taking my DD out for a week.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

We took our older daughter (2nd grade at the time) to China, in March, for two weeks when we adopted our younger daughter.

The school's response?

"Have a great time and tell us all about your experience."

In no world is this comparable to taking your child out to go to Disney because it is less crowded then.

My son's teacher told us to have a blast at Disney! Nobody at school batted an eye. Most families at our school travel. It simply isn't an issue. It's only an issue in your own head...and you're really missing out on life because of it.

my daughter's teacher told us to have a great time at disney as well. She even provided my daughter with a disney themed journal (must have downloaded from the internet) to complete as HW.

Have pulled DD three years in a row (K-3) in the middle of the school year to go to Europe. No issues at the school.

I actually think this is a SAH/WOH thing. WOH parents have to pay for care when school is out so they'd rather take trips then. SAH parents want the benefits of lower crowds and (sometimes but not always) lower costs by traveling off season. I SAH and we take 1 week (usually in late Jan or Feb to south FL or the Caribbean) in addition to leaving early for several of the long weekends. When oldest hits middle we plan to reduce this to adding a day here and there on long weekends but no issues right now. Each year at back to school night the principal says trip absenses will be unexcused and yet every time the report card comes they are marked as excused. (And yes I am honest about what we are doing.)

In ES, missing a few days is not a big day. We regularly extended a Jan 4 day weekend to 1 week, and one year, two weeks (Obama's Inauguration resulted in consecutive 4 day weekends). Typically, we would go to Florida: family and fun (Disney etc).

Now, starting in the 6th grade, the amount of work missed started becoming an issue. In 7th, we cut it out to 1 day. Now, DD really does not want to miss school: too much make up work.