Thanksgiving break has continually caused problems and students are demanding a change.
Wadsworth High School [WHS] has a traditional four-day Thanksgiving break. On the week of the holiday, students attend school through Nov. 25-27. The 28 and 29 are taken off. On Dec. 2, WHS students return to school. This means that WHS allows two days off, not including that weekend.
Having such a short amount of time off causes countless problems for students and their families. The Thanksgiving celebration often brings the whole family together, and sometimes, families are living across the state or country. Students may have to travel extended distances to see their relatives, which can potentially take days. When this happens, parents may pull their child out of school to get to their destination in time. Inadvertently, this makes absences increase, as well as the amount of work due.

“Some families have several Thanksgiving events at different houses, and only giving four days to go everywhere isn’t enough,” said WHS junior Tabitha Quinlan.
Not only does such a short time off complicate things for students but parents as well. Parents who are teachers often work in separate districts, and these schools run on a much different schedule than Wadsworth. This means that they have to work out plans with their school and work around their student’s schedule as well. Their children may already be on break, but the parents can still be working. It cuts off important time that could be used for preparing for the holiday or traveling to see relatives.
“As a staff member who is in charge of attendance, the week before break is always really crazy,” said Mindy Workman, an attendance secretary at WHS. “There are a lot of absences. Especially if you work in a different district, since a lot of parents are teachers, and they’re gonna go based off of their breaks.”
Teachers are also aware that plenty of students will not be present that week. Due to the absences, they plan to not teach at all, or teach very little. Parents may hear that their kids will not be learning much that day, so they call their kids off for the day.
“If teachers aren’t teaching something super important that day, they’ll decide to have a lighter day because they know there’s going to be a lot of absences,” Workman said. “Then the parents will call their kid off, so it creates a cycle.”
Attendance statistics also show that something needs to change. Absences spike dramatically during the week of Thanksgiving break, which has been shown time and time again over the years. On Nov. 16, 2022, which was a regular school day for WHS, there were only 215 absences out of the 1625 total students. 120 of those were full absences, 41 were classified as non-absences, and 53 were a partial absence. Just a week later, on Nov. 23, the total number of students absent grew to 421. 306 of those were full absences, 35 were non-absence, and 80 were partial. This means that 19 percent of the entire student population did not attend school at all the day before break.
On Nov. 15, 2023, 199 students were not present. 95 of those students had a full absence, 46 had a non-absence, and 54 had a partial absence. One week later, On Nov. 22, 418 people were absent. 252 students had a full absence, 52 were non-absences, and 103 were partial. 16 percent of the student body did not show up for the last day of school before Thanksgiving break.
With such an increase in absences during the week of break, it becomes increasingly clear that something must change within the school system.
Thanksgiving break can be made longer in several different ways. The easiest would be do extend the amount of days off to the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It gives WHS students an entire week off from school, something that they desperately need.