A week off for Thanksgiving? Kansas schools and students say, ‘Yes, please | Opinion

As Thanksgiving approaches, college students in Kansas are cramming their dirty clothes into rolling bags bound for their parents’ laundry rooms. Others are checking off final assignments before the nine-day break. Some of them are booking their rides to the airport, ready to sleep through the flight with noise-canceling headphones cupping each ear.

But some of Kansas students are just waiting. Waiting for their break to start.

Thanksgiving is the second most important holiday that school schedules need to accommodate, after the winter holiday, which allows for Christmas, New Year’s and other seasonal celebrations. This holiday break is so vital that it splits the semesters of the academic year.

The other holidays aren’t even close to Thanksgiving’s importance. Labor Day doesn’t have the family pull of Thanksgiving. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the final day of winter break at colleges, so that is simple to schedule. And Memorial Day is too late in May to disrupt many school calendars, unless it’s a school year with a bunch of snow days.

Schools must break for Thanksgiving, but for how many days?

As a teacher of more than two decades, I have watched this spot on the calendar shift slowly, school district by school district. What was most commonly three days off of school (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) has grown.

More frequently, schools are taking the entire week off for Thanksgiving. When combined with the weekends on either side, a Monday-through-Friday break for Thanksgiving turns into a nine-day escape. Many districts now accurately call this fall break, matching the spring break that students and teachers relish in March.

Consider the 20 largest school districts in Kansas, according to 2023-2024 enrollment. Most schools — 17 of the 20 districts — provide students with an entire week off. (At some of the schools, teachers are expected to work, but not instruct students.)

Only three school districts, including the state’s largest in Wichita, provide a smaller three-day break (or five, when combined with the weekend). One of those districts, Dodge City, allows students an early dismissal on Tuesday. (Also, on the short list? Derby.)

Thanksgiving break inflation is real, and welcome, in K-12 public schools.

To be a student who has a shorter break is a special form of November torture, especially if a neighboring district has the longer one. Lucky students razz their friends over social media about their comically short break.

After all, education is one of the few industries where the client wants less of the product.

Compare those K-12 school district calendars to those of the six state universities in Kansas, which are split 50/50 between the full-week break and the three-day break. Students at the University of Kansas, Wichita State University and Emporia State University have scheduled classes through Tuesday. However, Kansas State, Pittsburg State and Fort Hays State University finish classes the week before Thanksgiving.

KU, for one, doesn’t plan on changing. Its calendars through fall 2027 list the same length break for the next three years: Wednesday through Friday.

This difference between how most K-12 school districts and most state universities treat Thanksgiving is counterintuitive. If you consider how many students at KU, WSU and ESU travel home for the holiday, college students should be most likely to receive the full time off. The days surrounding Thanksgiving produce some of the most congestion at airports and highways, making the shorter break even more frantic.

What should we expect from our university students when thousands of college and high school students are out on break, yet campus is still in session?

Scheduling Monday and Tuesday classes creates tension.

The often optional attendance policies in many college classes means that students will simply ditch their courses and cross their fingers. These class days are flimsy. Some lectures will be canceled. Others will meet online on Zoom. University professors and instructors know better than to schedule a major project or test during this week. That’s just a recipe for make-up exams, shoddy work and missing assignments.

To measure the importance, students have been asking me during the past few weeks: “Are we going to do anything in class on Tuesday?”

What they are most often saying is: “I am going to miss class on Tuesday. How bad is that?”

I feel conflicted each semester. Students are paying tuition for this class period, so I believe in giving them their fair value. I also have more material each semester than I can fit into our lectures.

You will find me in my classrooms at my scheduled class times. Call me a tyrant robbing students of family time. Call me a rule follower who obeys the calendar too strictly. And call me naive, but some students actually like coming to class and learning new material. (Insert student eye roll here.)

For those students, I will see you next week — even if we are all poised to flee campus for time around the family Thanksgiving table.