Shrinking summers force creative vacation plans
For Jettie Kootman, 2007 is shaping up as the year of the shrinking summer.
Like many schools, her 15-year-old daughter’s high school is moving its starting date a week earlier this year to Aug. 13, squeezing summer break down to two months, says the Paradise Valley, Ariz., mother. The change “messes up families and family vacations,” ruining plans for an August trip.
Blame it on calendar creep. The traditional three-month school vacation has shrunk to two as officials extend classes deeper into June and reopen earlier in August. The result: “You have a whole nation trying to take vacation in the same two months,” says Bruce De Witte, a Franklin, Mass., father of three. Families are adapting in many ways, from splitting up the family to vacation separately, to stealing back children’s time by calling them in “sick” during the school year.
School officials say they need the added school time to reduce summer learning setbacks and prepare students to do well on standardized tests. Many also want students to finish fall-term final exams before the Christmas holiday. They’re adding one- or two-day holidays during the year to make up for the lost time.
But parents say the squeeze on summer robs them of the flexibility they need to plan extended vacations. Increasingly competitive youth sports teams, plus intensive camp and service programs, are consuming more weeks of summer. Many working parents have trouble getting time off during the summer, when co-worker competition for vacation weeks is at a peak; narrowing the time-off window just makes it harder.
Some families are throwing up a white flag. Vacations taken in summer have fallen to 28 percent of all vacations, from 31 percent a decade ago, says the Travel Industry Association. A spokeswoman cites not only the shrinking summer breaks, but also rising travel costs and growing competition from kids’ extracurricular activities. Also, the average vacation has shrunk to four nights from six or seven two decades ago. With just two months free from school this summer, our family is hoping at best for a long weekend away.
Some families are splitting up to squeeze in brief vacations. School calendars for Brian Avery’s four children leave only two months free for summer, and his 16-year-old son’s water-polo team consumes much of that. To ease scheduling, the Atherton, Calif., father says, his wife will take one child on an East Coast college-campus tour, and he’ll take a separate trek with two of their children, to a water-polo tournament. He yearns for more family togetherness. “It only feels like a family unit when all six of us are together,” he says.
Others are quietly stealing back the lost time. With her family’s summer vacation squeezed to a few days, Julia McGill, Keswick, Va., says she’ll probably pull her sons, 8 and 10, out of school a few days before Christmas break for a trip to Florida.
Kenneth Strongman, Walnut Creek, Calif., says that while he wouldn’t have considered taking his kids out of school in the past, calendar creep has changed his attitude. “We are much more willing to call in sick for our sons” for family trips, he says.