The schools in my area have started closing for “President’s week.” When I was in school (five years ago) we only had President’s Day. A quick search has shown that schools in other areas also close for a week during this time. So, my question is, when did President’s day morph into President’s week? Is this a tradition that my area was slow to adopt, or is it a recent change?
I considered putting this in IMHO, since I don’t know how easy it will be to get a factual answer. Sorry if it belongs there instead.
Thanks in advance.
Public schools in New York have traditionally had a week’s vacation at the end of february for quite some time. We always just called it “February vacation,” though.
Before Presidents’ Day, we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday, eight days apart. The public school I went to didn’t get either day off. Later, some genius congressman combined the two, and now it honors all presidents, regardless of their significance. It cut in half the opportunities for merchants to stage phony sales with allusions to cherry trees and split rail fences.
I’m not sure if this is true of every place that has “President’s Week” off, but here in New York City, it’s the result of contract negotiations between the city Board of Education and the Teachers’ Union. The Board of Ed didn’t want to spend more money on teacher salary, so they gave the teachers fewer days to work instead.
I believe this practice varies by region, based on my very limited experience. Massachusetts - President’s Day and subsequent week - vacation. Washington State - President’s Day off, rest of the week school as usual.
I don’t think it was just the teacher’s union that caused it in NYC, because the Catholic schools had it, too. I remember being told at the time (early 70’s) that it was to save on heating bills. After all, schools have to be in session a certain number of days, but it doesn’t much matter if there are four extra days off in February, or if school starts four days later in Sept, or if it ends four days sooner in June.
doreen, the Catholic schools may be aligning themselves to the public school schedule. For one thing, the school buses, which plenty of private schools (including my kids’ Jewish ones) use with public funding, only run when public school is in session.
The Jewish schools have school that week (and we parents have to arrange the transportation ourselves for that time) because they need to make up days of schooling for the Jewish holidays on which they’re off. But the Catholic schools probably don’t need to.
Nope, one thing I’m sure of is that the Catholic schools aren’t aligning themelves to the public school schedules. The Catholic schools in NYC don’t even align their schedules to each other- my kids are in two different ones and everything from opening day to the last day of classes is different. I remember having the week off while I was in Catholic grade school in the '70s. I started a public high school in '77, and I think that was the first year the public schools had the week off.
Don’t get me wrong- the teacher’s union certainly had to agree to it. But even if the city agreed to give the teachers four more days off instead of a raise, I suspect the heating costs were the reason those four days off came in February rather than in September or June.
Exactly! (Well, maybe not exactly… I think the two days were ten days apart. Weren’t they the 12th and the 22nd?)
Presidents’ Day is just another gimmick to allow some folks to take a day off work. As far as kids being off school, well, that doesn’t seem to require even a gimmick any more…