A countdown starts as soon as that first bell rings on the first day of school. It’s a countdown to fall break, winter break, spring break and eventually summer break. We all love summer break with it being the longest away from school, so it’s what everyone ends up looking forward to. However, those other little seasonal breaks in between end up being the one thing that makes us get through the school year. So why is it that when each year comes to a close, winter break gets cut even shorter? 

We need to cut back on our summer break to give us a more extended time away from school on winter break, but it is possible to have two full weeks off and still get off school with a decent amount of summer left. For example, Robbinsdale Cooper High School officially started their winter break Dec. 25, but their last day of school was Friday, Dec. 22. They had until Jan. 5, which was also a Friday, for their winter break, so they got 16 days off. We only got from Dec. 22 until Jan. 2, which is 12 days. And get this: their last day of school is June 5, whereas ours is June 7. So it is possible to have a more extended winter break while leaving room for summer. But at the same time, would having a shorter summer break be such a big sacrifice to get longer, relaxing breaks during the school year? 

With the semester closing in, it’s nice to step back from everything and not think about school. It’s the time of holidays and spending time with family. If you don’t celebrate the holidays or spend time with family, it’s about having fun and experiencing things you couldn’t experience, without the thought of going back to school looming. If we only have a week off for winter break, we don’t have that time to ourselves. It feels like school is just around the corner. We need time to relax, and a short winter break does not give that to us. If we were willing to give up just a week in the summer for a longer winter break, then we could be teenagers again. We can do things that wouldn’t feel the same in our 20s. Sure, there are many things to do in the summer, but there are just as many things to do in the winter. Do we want to look back at our past selves and see we were too busy thinking about how bright the sun is to see how pretty the snow could be? 

With a longer winter break, it also gives people the opportunity to travel. A week is enough sometimes, but for people who drive instead of fly, it might not be. They would spend more time on the road than with their family just to make it back to school on time. And even if they fly, it might also be difficult. Some families only have to travel within the US, like me, who has family in Puerto Rico. But what about the minority? The students who have family across the world in different countries? The time changes and the jet lag could affect the first day they land, and then think about how draining it could be to be so far from home. It might feel bad for the people who are just states away, but what about the people traveling to Kenya? Or Japan? If sacrificing a week in the summer could make the holidays feel better for people, would it be so bad? In the summer, we would still have so much time to do everything we normally would have done; a week would not make a difference. 

Park preaches how attentive they are to our wants and needs, but when we express how the shorter winter breaks drive us crazy, they don’t seem to hear us. We need a break; we’re in school for more than half of our year, and a longer winter break really isn’t too much to ask for compared to the amount of time we’re asked to spend at school. We deserve time to ourselves, and the time we are given just is not enough. 

With winter break seeming to shorten every year, students, teachers and parents alike have had their complaints. These changes in length have come from multiple factors, with one of the greater ones in recent years being the addition of other religious holidays off throughout the year. There are other ways to make up for having more days off, like taking days off of summer break, but I believe that we’re doing it the right way by shortening winter break instead.

For many students, winter break doesn’t always feel like a true break. It’s right at the end of first semester, so we’re told to make sure our grades are where we want them before break because there won’t be much time to fix them when we get back. This leads to many students, like myself, having assignments or studying spill into break time. Especially when break is right before finals in many classes, I’m always trying desperately to remember the information I learned in the weeks leading up to break. While you may say that a longer winter break would help it feel more like a true break from school, I disagree. Adding more days after New Years only puts more days in between the last time you were in class and when you may have to take a final. It also gives less in-class preparation days once we return, and if you’re anything like me, that only leads to more stress. While I do believe that the best solution would be to just have semester one end before winter break, that’s simply not possible in our school calendar. We have to work with what we have, so keeping fewer days separating learning and finals will always be helpful.

You may have heard that other Minnesota school districts are able to have a full two-week winter break and include all of the holidays that we now have off. While that seems like the dream scenario, I’ll tell you it’s not. One of these school districts is Minneapolis. They had a full week off on the week of Dec. 18, whereas on that week we only had Friday, Dec. 22 off. With that, they have to extend the school year into mid-June. While we’re getting out of school on June 7, Minneapolis isn’t finished until June 14, a full week later. In the past, Park students have noticed that we tend to finish school later than many other districts, and it’s never fun to see your friends beginning their summer break knowing you have another week in the classroom. Now imagine that same scenario, but it’s extended even another week. Since we’ve been back from winter break for just a couple weeks now, you may still be in the mindset that you wished we had only just gotten back this Monday, Jan. 8, and that extra week at the end of the year may not seem like a big deal. However, once you’re celebrating your freedom from the school year at 3:15 p.m. on June 7, you’ll be extremely grateful that you’re not going back on Monday.

One of the biggest arguments against having a shorter winter break comes down to travel. Every school break gives families an opportunity to take some sort of vacation, and winter break brings holiday family visits into the picture. I can personally relate to this because every other year my family drives to Kansas for Christmas to celebrate with my dad’s side of the family, and a shortened winter break has never affected that for us. Our family visits are always specifically for a holiday, and Park has always given enough time before and after Christmas for travel time to and from wherever you may be going. While I understand that winter break doesn’t cover all winter religious holidays — this year Hanukkah wasn’t even overlapping it — I still have known people that have used the winter break time for late or early visits for different holidays, and have had plenty of time to get there and back within the days we have off. Now you may be asking, “What about non-holiday visits?” I realize that many people would like to travel and still stay home for the holidays, but not too many of those people are dying to go on a week-long trip after New Years. When families are planning their trips for the year, most would rather do a “just for fun” trip over spring or summer break, so adding days to the end of winter break may only help a few people in that aspect. I think many students and teachers would agree that they’d rather have extra days to take a trip during the summer than during the winter.

Overall, opinions about a shorter winter break versus a shorter summer break will change with the time of year. Like I said, around winter break we’re wanting it to be as long as possible, but once we reach the end of the year we’ll be grateful that we took those extra school days earlier on. Winter break is meant to celebrate holidays with family and give students a short break before the end of first semester, and right now the length of it encompasses that perfectly.