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Is Vacation an Excused Absence from School? Here’s What You Really Need to Know
The short answer to “is vacation an excused absence from school?” is it depends. However, there’s so much more to consider in this issue than just how your school district classifies taking kids out of school for vacation.
Prior to traveling full time, we often decided to vacation during the school year rather than limiting ourselves to school breaks. Why? There’s no question that travel is educational in itself.
Note: Different countries have different rules for truancy. This post is limited to my knowledge of school systems in the United States. If you live elsewhere, check what your government’s education website says about your country’s rules.
In addition, there’s a ton of value in expanding a child’s life experience beyond the classroom and their daily existence.
But some parents question if it’s worth the effort for a kid to miss school for family vacations. We think the trade-off makes sense for several reasons.
Excused Absences vs. Unexcused Absences
School excuses for vacation days vary by state and by the district. However, the general definitions remain basically the same.
Excused Absences
Excused absences are those absences that both the school and the parent/guardian approve.
This means the absence will not affect their attendance grade in classes, and in some cases, will not affect their overall attendance score used to give perfect attendance awards. Written notes are often a requirement for this kind of absence.
Examples of excused absences generally include:
- Doctor’s appointments (a note is often required)
- College campus tours (a note is often required)
- Severe illness (a note is often required)
- Family emergencies
- Religious observances
- Absences related to a student’s dependency or foster status
- Absences related to a suspension
Unexcused Absences
An unexcused absence is when children miss school for reasons not accepted by the school and/or the parent.
This does affect their attendance in classes and can affect their overall attendance scores or even grade scores in some cases.
If a student has an excused absence but doesn’t provide a written note when required, it will usually be considered unexcused as well.
Examples of unexcused absences generally include:
- Sleeping late or missing school transportation
- Non-medical personal appointments (hair cuts, massages, etc.)
- Unapproved vacations
- Leaving school early without notifying school officials
- Non-serious illnesses without a doctor’s note (colds, stomachache, etc.)
- Skipping school for no legitimate reason (aka: playing hooky)
If a school district does not classify vacation as an excused absence, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost.
There are a certain number of unexcused absences each year that kids can miss school before they are considered truant and school officials get grumpy.
Why Travel Regardless if Vacation is an Excused Absence from School
Limiting family travel to school vacation times is exactly that. Limiting. Here are some travel tips to help you decide if taking your children on vacation during school days is the right choice for your family.
Cost
Taking a vacation during the school year typically means that rates for hotels and airfare are lower, due to decreased volume of tourists. We are budget travelers at heart and always have been.
👉 I love that Skyscanner allows flight searches to “Anywhere” from your home airport!
I would never spend $600 per person on air travel to Walt Disney World for Spring Break when I could spend that much on flights for the three of us by traveling in February instead.
Spending less on airfare and hotels allowed us to do more fun activities and excursions on each vacation. This is still true in our current lifestyle. It also expanded our budget to travel more regularly before becoming digital nomads.
Fewer Crowds
Traveling outside of school breaks means that you’re more likely to be traveling during the low season. There will be fewer people flying, fewer people staying in hotels, and fewer people driving on road trips.
Even booking excursions will be easier. If there are fewer people on vacation when you are, then there will be fewer people booking the same excursions that you want to do.
The bonus of fewer crowds means that sometimes you’ll even benefit from low-season pricing on excursions. Tour operators want to attract participants, so they often lower prices.
Hobbies
As he got older, our son discovered more activities that interested him. This included day camps during school breaks and sports activities. We’ve found this to be true among our friends who still live a more traditional lifestyle.
No matter how hard we tried not to overschedule Little Man, he still stayed very busy on weekends and breaks from school.
By traveling when school was in session, we enabled him to continue to pursue his hobbies while fitting in quality time as a family during vacations.
Learning Takes Many Forms
School plays a vital role in many people’s lives. We have teacher friends who we respect greatly, and attending school for a few years before we left to travel was overall a positive experience for our child.
That said, there are so many ways to educate a child outside the traditional brick-and-mortar education system. Just in a one-week vacation to Mexico in 2018, our son covered five school subjects without even realizing it.
Not only did he have an opportunity to practice Spanish with native speakers but he also had physical education by swimming in the pool, history by learning about the Mayans, science by learning about fish and other sea life, and art by doing special projects in the kids club.
Although he wasn’t doing worksheets, he was certainly learning! He even came back with some fun stories to share with his teachers and classmates.
Don’t Choose Between School and Travel
With the rise of the pandemic, online schooling has gained tremendous popularity. We enrolled in a very flexible online school in 2021, so it’s even easier to take education with us wherever we go.
While choosing an online school can be a difficult process at first, the freedom to travel more seems like a worthwhile trade-off to us. Even if we were still living in Chicago, we would definitely have considered it.
Of course, homeschooling and online schooling allow the most flexibility of any school type. However, this isn’t an option or an interest for everyone.
Tips for Discussing Vacation as an Excused Absence with the School
If you are really committed to ensuring that your children only take vacations from school if they are deemed excused absences, there are a few things you can do.
Choose your travel dates carefully.
If your child has a short school week, perhaps choose that week instead of the following one. That way, they will miss fewer days of school overall.
In addition, avoid dates that are essential to the school. Going on vacation while your child is scheduled for standardized testing or end-of-semester exams will be highly frowned upon by the school.
If a school sees that you are committed to your child’s education, they may approve the vacation as an excused absence even if the formal state or district policy says otherwise.
Talk to the kids’ teachers
Offer to ensure the kids keep up on their school work during the time you’ll be gone. They may feel better about a student missing class.
This is probably only necessary for older kids, from middle school on up. There isn’t anything a 1st grader learns in a week at school that can’t be caught up on when they return.
Write a Letter
Consider writing the principal and the teachers a “taking your child out of school for vacation letter.” Or email. Send it well in advance of your trip.
In this message, explain what they’ll be learning while they aren’t in school and what steps you plan to take while you’re on vacation. Include your travel dates so the school administration knows when you plan to return.
When we used to take Little Man out of school for vacations, I always provided the teacher and principal with an action plan.
I listed all the educational activities we’d be doing, even if we planned to stay at an all-inclusive resort. They never seemed upset.
Ask for Extra Credit
If the teachers and/or principal still seem resistant to your child missing a few days of school for vacation, consider discussing extra credit assignments. Seriously think about if you want to do this before you ask, though.
It will create extra work for your child on vacation. However, a high school history teacher may welcome an extra credit assignment on Chichen Itza from your vacation. Especially if your child is in honors classes.
Conclusion: Is Vacation an Excused Absence from School?
I know I said it depends. However, most school districts do not classify vacation as an excused absence from school. It’s considered unexcused.
The real question should be, do you care if those five weekdays are unexcused for a one-week family vacation?
It was easier for us to take what some may feel is a cavalier approach to missing school because our son was in his early elementary school years at the time. As he got older, it may not have been so easy to miss school due to tests or projects.
However, considering how much the upsides outweighed the drawbacks for our family, it was an easy decision to make.
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