In the past couple years at Park, students and teachers have noticed shorter winter breaks on the school calendar. It’s partly due to where holidays land, but also partly due to including days off for other holidays throughout the year. This has made it difficult for everyone at Park, as they’re having to tweak holiday plans every year due to a different length break.
According to school board chair Anne Casey, the board tries to keep winter break to two weeks as it has been in the past, but any change in the calendar makes that more difficult.
“It’s one of the priorities to keep it as close to two weeks as possible. It’s just that in some years, it’s the way that the calendar works out,” Casey said. “Now that we’ve added some additional days off during the year, it makes it very difficult to have both a two week winter break and then also get out at a reasonable time in June. We’ve always had to have a little bit of a tightrope between the length of winter break and the amount of time we go into June.”
English teacher Kelsey Hanson said, as a mom, winter break gets very busy in a short time period, but students can also feel that stress.
“Over winter break people are with their families, and even though you’re not at school, that can still be a really busy time,” Hanson said. “I have two kids, so over winter break we’re extremely busy and stressed and we get a couple days after that whole holiday time to rest and relax, but it’s just not enough honestly. Even though the students here probably aren’t planning, it’s still so busy for everyone and nobody gets any time to chill.”
Senior Mel Kang said they don’t personally have a lot of big uses for winter break, but having more time at home would still be beneficial.
“I just stay at home with my family mostly, use it as a time to unwind from school,” Kang said. “For me it wouldn’t really (have an effect) except I’d have to go back to school sooner, which is never fun. For other people it could mean less time with their family that they normally don’t get to see.”
Hanson said teachers still aren’t fully on break during winter break, as they still use that time for schoolwork on top of working for their families.
“My husband and I are both teachers so we have to have at least one day where we’re focused working, so we take turns doing that. Now, that’s really short for me,” Hanson said. “My husband is in Minneapolis, so he gets two full weeks off, and my daughter is also in Minneapolis. So they’re going to be hanging out, doing fun things together, probably doing a lot of baking or prepping for our meals that we’re going to share with our families. It’s not like we’re not working, it’s just a different type of work. It’s very busy.”
Casey said part of the reason that winter break has been shortened in the last couple years is to be more inclusive of religious holidays outside of Christianity.
“A couple of years ago we added Jewish holidays and Eid for our Muslim students and families, and that was a big priority for our board and our community, to make sure that we were able to add those days in so that our students wouldn’t have to miss school for their important religious holidays,” Casey said. “Of course, that just adds more pressure on the calendar.”
According to Kang, even if it takes away from winter break, it’s still very important to give equal time off for students of all religions.
“It’s more inclusive to other people,” Kang said. “Normally, if you had a different religion with other holidays, you’d be missing school for that and missing important curriculum. With being more inclusive, they don’t have to miss school for that anymore.”
