As the holiday season fast approaches with Thanksgiving just a week away and Christmas just around the corner, families dramatically increase their travel with record numbers each year. There are many reasons why people travel over the holidays, but the most common one is to see family across the country or to go on vacation. 

According to TSA data, they are prepared to “screen 18.3 million people from Tuesday, November 26 to Monday, December 2.” This however does not include ground travel. Continually, TSA screenings have increased over the holidays each year. 

With so many people traveling, more students will be absent from school during the days they have school that week, along with the possibility of missing important assignments due to teachers trying to cram in assessments before the break. Families will push back travel until later in the week to accommodate for school and work schedules which begs the question: why don’t schools give the full week off at Thanksgiving to accommodate their students better?

Even though students may have lots of work in the two days before Thanksgiving, many students just miss anyway because they have a trip to go on with family causing unneeded stress as students prepare for the end of the semester.

Some would argue that if you don’t miss a school day then the problem would never be there, but students are going to miss regardless of their school work. Other schools within the same districts may have the whole week off such as the Homer School District, Oak Prairie School District, and Kelvin Grove District which is not technically part of Lockport High School’s District. Although the districts are not the same, why do families have to navigate having their middle schoolers off and not their highschoolers?