This past week I went to sleep everyday to the sound of the blaring T.V. set from across the hall. This unfortunate situation was repeated because of one thing, my younger siblings’ February vacation. I would not be complaining if I were also on vacation, but our family’s vacations occur at different times throughout the year.
My two younger siblings, who are in fourth and fifth grade, go to a West Hartford public school, and they have vacation for one-week periods in December, February, and April. On the other hand, most private schools have two-week vacations in December and March. The only times our vacations overlap is for one week in December during Christmas and Hanukah. Given this schedule, it is almost impossible for families who have children in both public and private schools to take vacations together without pulling their children out of school. In my case, since my parents don’t want any of us to miss school, my siblings stay up late making lots of noise while I am trying to get sleep for school the next day.
My younger brother and sister both love having school vacations split up into several different weeks of short vacations because they like having small breaks from school. They like it because they are refreshed when they go back to school. “Just when I am getting bored of school, I have a vacation,” my-eleven-year-old brother says.
I, however, have the luxury of having a two-week vacation twice a year. “When you have two weeks of vacation, you have the time to really get school out of your mind and get refreshed,” Paula Hagopian, a seventh grade student at my private middle school, declares. While interviewing several of my peers at Kingswood-Oxford Middle School, I found out that most kids like having two week vacations.
My parents are the only people who do not like either type of vacation. They think that both public and private schools need to agree on the same vacations so that our family, and others like ours, can take a relaxing break without taking any of their kids out of school. With the vacation schedule as it is, my parents have no time to themselves because, as I heard my mother complaining to a friend, “When one kid goes back to school, another one comes out of school. I have no free time anymore.”
My parents both work, and they can’t take that much time off from work for every vacation. When my siblings and I get time off, we have nothing to do because both of our parents are at work. As a result, our vacations are not that much fun. This vicious cycle can only be resolved if all of my siblings and I have vacation at the same times. “I don’t have time to spend with you during vacations because you all have totally different vacation schedules,” my dad announced at the dinner table the other night.
If public and private schools could agree on the same vacation schedule, the word vacation would take on a whole new meaning, at least in my family.
~Sarah Goldman