The holiday season is an important time of the year for family bonding time, traveling, and celebrating.
When it comes to pumpkin pies, turkeys, Christmas trees, family time, and traveling, the holiday season produces an abundance of joy.
However, a downfall of the fun and joy is returning to school.
At the end of Thanksgiving break, students have to wait only a total of 28 days until Christmas break. In the 28-day timeline, 17 of those days are school days.
As of the 2021 district calendar, Thanksgiving break starts with an early dismissal on Nov. 24 and ends when school resumes on Nov. 30. Christmas break starts with an early dismissal on Dec. 23 and ends when school resumes on Jan. 4.
What if, instead of dealing with the confusion of schedules, we just had a long break during winter, starting at the beginning of Thanksgiving break, and resumed school in the second week of January as normal?
With the hassle of teachers deciding what assignments to give with the half-weeks and long breaks, one long break during winter will ease the confusion.
Along with teachers, the half-weeks and chunked up schedules don’t give the students a very efficient way to process the information given by their teachers. Just like very few students contribute to summer reading, very few students actually review the material given by their teachers during breaks.
Breaks should be a fun, relaxing time period for students and teachers, especially during the holidays when that time should be spent with friends and family.
As stated, the issues with the current schedule of breaks is that it’s very unorganized, chaotic, and confusing. Teachers won’t have time to assign tests if we don’t have time to learn the material that will be on those tests.
“It’s difficult for students to adjust from break, back in school, and break again so quickly,” says Katie McChesney, a former student at Derry.
We only have 17 days in school in between breaks, including two half weeks: one half week at the beginning of Thanksgiving break and one at the beginning of Christmas break.
Another issue is that Christmas break, as of the 2021 district calendar, starts with an early dismissal on Dec. 23, leaving only a few hours before Christmas eve.
This is concerning especially for traveling families during the holidays. Traffic is very hectic on Christmas eve with how many families have to travel.
Christmas eve is just as important as the main day of celebration because it’s where the excitement for the morning of presents and celebration begins. If students are only given a few hours to pack and travel for Christmas eve, it can get very stressful with packing, getting everything together, and traveling whether by car or plane. The holiday season should be anything but stressful to anyone.
The new school year would look like this:
Each semester would be a total of 60 days, and there would be 3 semesters.
1 semester would be when school resumes after summer break, then we’d go on our holiday break from the end of November to the beginning of January. When school resumes after holiday break, there would be 2 semesters following until summer break starts.
There needs to be a total of 180 days in school; with 3 semesters of 60 days, this new school year would match that criteria.
One issue with this schedule is, of course, the less number of days in summer break.
An argument against this new proposed schedule is jobs at amusement parks that teens get in summer. Summer break is about 3 months. Taking about 6 weeks off of summer break leaves about 2 months still of summer break, leaving plenty of time for summer job opportunities, specifically at amusement parks because they aren’t open in the winter season.
A benefit of this proposal is that it’s beneficial for the bus drivers. It’s often difficult to drive in tough weather in a car, let alone a bus full of 30 students. This new schedule could reduce winter accidents caused by drifting on the roads and make travel for the bus drivers easier.
Adding onto the winter weather, with this new schedule, there will be less snow days, so that the days we are scheduled to be in school will be more valuable and we won’t have to be concerned about sudden changes.
This proposed schedule will leave more time for traveling, relaxing, and be more efficient when it comes to assignments in school and learning. It would take away all of the stresses caused from the current, broken up, schedule for holiday breaks.

These thoughts only skim the surface, but it is something to think about heading into a post-COVID world, especially when it comes to public education.