Not all CA elementary schools; only some of them. It crops up most often in private schools, or in schools in wealthy districts, or in schools very NEAR wealthy districts (like Pat's, unfortunately). Our district (thank Goddess!) doesn't have ski week. But another close friend of mine in a district near here has always had to deal with it. Apparently, enough families took their kids out of school that the disticts concluded they might as well rearrange the schedule to accomodate that. Unfortunately, it leaves most parents without care for their kids, or scrambling to pay for care, or having to take vacation days to cover a time when there really aren't any other options available. It ranks up there with "early dismissal" days, when I have to have my kindergartner at school at 8:10, rather than 11:30; these happen apparently whenever the district feels like it. We had one last week for Valentine's Day if you can believe it. What a GREAT Valentine's present for all the parents, huh? I think maybe they do this to make up for the paucity of randomness in our lives, due to a lack of snow days. ;^) The thing is, with Snow Days, most of the parents are home already anyway. With early dismissal days, employers tend to look askance at request for time off to be home for the kids.
OK, enough complaints for one morning. I return you to your regularly scheduled LJ.
Thanks for explaining. That does sound inconvenient. In Ontario, the schools don't get any holidays between January and March. They all get the third week of March off, as "winter break" or "March Break". That's all the schools in both public systems everywhere in the province that I know about, so there are lots of daycamp type programs that week. Many families go to Florida or somewhere else warm. But it's the only holiday our kids have while university classes are in session, so we can't travel. When our two were younger, we used to brainstorm ahead of time about how to fill their week and not make P stir-crazy. (The climbing gym's kid program was a big hit one year. R's birthday is often during March break, so the kids used to spend a whole day decorating the house and a cake and making cards. And we used to take them to a movie, back when that was a big treat.) I think it was during March Break one year that we came up with the custom of designating a Parent On Duty and teaching the kids that they couldn't always go to P first just because she was in the house.
Nowadays their March break plans are usually things like going out of town on the train to visit universities with friends, visit Grandma for a few days, or hang out with Internet friends for a few days, and the usual sleep in and rent movies kind of recharging. None of which requires much input from us
It is formally known as "Winter Break" (as opposed to "Holiday Break" which happens around Christmas, and "Spring Break" which happens around Easter). Basically, in wealthy districts (like the ones next door to mine), parents would take their kids out at various times during January and February to go skiing. This was the solution to that problem. It usually falls the week of Presidents Day, since everybody has that Monday off anyway.
I actually know a family in our district who goes skiing during this week, but they have relatives that live at Lake Tahoe.
As for me, I wouldn't go skiing even if I could afford it. I suppose some year we could go to Southern California, but most years this is a busy time for brian1789, this year especially.
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From the context I'm guessing a February vacation for California elementary schools?
Do they call it ski week? Do many families ski?
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OK, enough complaints for one morning. I return you to your regularly scheduled LJ.
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Nowadays their March break plans are usually things like going out of town on the train to visit universities with friends, visit Grandma for a few days, or hang out with Internet friends for a few days, and the usual sleep in and rent movies kind of recharging. None of which requires much input from us
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I actually know a family in our district who goes skiing during this week, but they have relatives that live at Lake Tahoe.
As for me, I wouldn't go skiing even if I could afford it. I suppose some year we could go to Southern California, but most years this is a busy time for