Texas school attendance policy and cruise dates

Status
Not open for further replies.

JHops

Earning My Ears
Joined
Mar 15, 2017
We are new Texans and have recently heard about some pretty strict attendance policies here. Do any of you take kids out of school for more than 3 days at a time for cruise vacations? Or any vacations? It’s A LOT more expensive at the designated breaks. And so crowded! Any advice or just welcome to TX and suck it up!:rotfl2:
 
We don't live in TX (live in Ohio, north of Columbus), but yes we do take our dd out of school for cruise vacations. Last year was the first year we did it. We are going on another cruise in a few weeks, she will miss 5 days of school. We have another cruise booked for Jan 2019, she will miss 6 days for it. She is in fourth grade, we probably won't take her out once she gets in high school. Right now it's not that difficult for her to make up the work she misses, she's an A student and usually only misses 1 or 2 days because of illnesses during the school year. We can only cruise during Jan-March, due to hubby's job, so if we want to do any kind of family vacation, she will be missing some school.
 
We have done the same thing. We were allowed 10 missed schools days without penalty in another state.
Texas has rules that I don’t understand. You hear stories about parents being served court papers for taking kids out for family vacation for a week.
 


Yes, it would be helpful to know what people who live in Texas have experienced. The policy is murky.
 
I live in TX with a school age kid in public school, but I don't know what the rules are that are so different. I know that each child has to attend school a certain number of days per year. However, I think they recently changed that to hours or minutes:sad2: I don't think illness is automatically excused from this rule, even with a doctor's note. There are exceptions for extreme illnesses. We don't take our son out of school for vacation. He has only missed more than 3 days in a row once, but he had a doctor's note and 30% of the school was out with that virus. We did get harassing letters from the district one year, because another boy with the same name in the same class had several absences. It wasn't at the state limit yet. We tried to get the school and district offices to fix the absences, but they never would. This was in elementary school. I think the rules should be on the TEA website. I can't be absolutely sure, but I think the absences allowed are something like 10 days per year. However, since each district may vary in number of days of school, that number may not be definite. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.
 


Talk to the person who enrolled your child at the school, in my district the title is SDS (Student Data Specialist). TX is strict and there is a truancy court if your child misses a certain number of “unexcused” days per semester. I work in an elementary school in the DFW area and saw a family get called, but I don’t know how many unexcused absences the student had.
 
So Texas can dictate what is excused and not excused for a school absence? Parents are not capable of this? How can a state be this controlling? Can you take your child out and homeschool them for vacation then re-enroll them?
 
I’m in Texas and we wanted to take our 5th grader on a repo through the Panama Canal. After trying to convince them it was educational, We ended up (at their suggestion) to technically “withdraw” her from school for 2 weeks. Worked fine and her teacher was happy to send homework so she didn’t get behind.

Schools get penalized when kids are absent, so this kept them from seeing the hit.
 
We are in Tennessee, but I was able to get my 10 day Disney vacation last year marked as Excused Absence. I wrote a letter with information about what we would be doing, but mentioned History/Social Studies would be taught as we would be seeing different countries and ports, Math as they would need to multiply, divide, add and subtract currency to keep up with their money, Science activities in the Oceaneer Lab, we kept up with AR goals while on vacation (they each read 2 books) and journaled about their trip for English/Language Arts. It worked for us, I'm not sure if that is something that could work in your favor, but thought I'd put that out there.
 
I'm in Texas. Ultimately, it depends on your district, how hard core they are, and how much your kid has missed already.

We took the 4 kids out of the last 4 days of school 3 years ago for our Baltic DCL cruise (it was significantly cheaper than waiting until June.) That included 2 high schoolers who missed final exams. One of those dds was super involved in a variety of activities, and she had to carefully keep track of how much time she'd missed. That meant missing a few track and tennis meets, and one debate tourney. It was that or have to go to summer school when she got back to get in all her required "minutes" in order to be considered a sophomore. We had no issues with the junior high and elementary kids. For the HS kids, they were able to exempt some exams, one got to take an exam early by accident, and one had to take the exam 6 weeks later, as she went almost directly from our cruise to a 3 week summer camp.

I have several friends that have disenrolled their kids for 2+ weeks, at the recommendation of the district, in order to visit family in India, travel, etc.

I'm pretty sure my district would laugh in my face if I suggested our cruise was "educational" no matter how valuable I believe international travel to be.
 
So Texas can dictate what is excused and not excused for a school absence? Parents are not capable of this? How can a state be this controlling? Can you take your child out and homeschool them for vacation then re-enroll them?

California does too. It's considered truancy. Here, your child can lose their slot in a school if you take them out to home school or put them in another public or private school. My kids are 27 and 31, and when they were in private high school, some parents chose the private option because of the more liberal absence policy. But the organizations that handle accreditation of private schools started cracking down on that when my youngest hit high school so that draw to private school is gone too.
At least here the problem is that so many schools are so close to the minimum allowed 175 instruction days, they can't let kids take vacation. The common response is they are out of session 13 full weeks a year and that should allow plenty of time for kids to go on vacation, especially since most parents don't have more than 4 or 5 weeks vacation.
 
Texas is one of the most lenient states when it comes to homeschooling. I know there are cruisers that pull their kids out to homeschool and then reenroll them. I have no idea what state they live in. I personally would never let the school district or state tell me what I can or cannot do with my own child, but that's just me to each their own. Maybe California is overcrowded, but we don't have to worry about kids losing a slot where we live.
 
I’m in Texas and we wanted to take our 5th grader on a repo through the Panama Canal. After trying to convince them it was educational, We ended up (at their suggestion) to technically “withdraw” her from school for 2 weeks. Worked fine and her teacher was happy to send homework so she didn’t get behind.

Schools get penalized when kids are absent, so this kept them from seeing the hit.
This is exactly it. They get penalized. It's not that they don't think traveling is educational or that they care about your child's welfare... It's all about money. I guess reading an article about the Panama Canal is more important then actually seeing it. I can't imagine an educator out there that wouldn't think a trip to see the Panama canal or a trip to Europe is not educational. In the 8th I took a two week trip to the East Coast and Washington DC as part of a school trip. My school apparently thought this was educational when my parents were paying the school for the trip

I've cruised out of Galveston three times during the school season and the ship was packed with school aged kids. I don't think parents are that worried about pulling their kids out.
 
Last edited:
I've cruised out of Galveston three times during the school season and the ship was packed with school aged kids. I don't think parents are that worried about pulling their kids out.
But how many of those kids are actually from Texas? Just because it sails from Galveston doesn't mean most people are from Texas. It's a lot closer for half the nation than PC.

I've heard these stories about Texas schools before and I'm glad I never had to deal with their regulations. Then again, my husband was a teacher so taking our kids out of school was kind of a moot point for us.
 
But how many of those kids are actually from Texas? Just because it sails from Galveston doesn't mean most people are from Texas. It's a lot closer for half the nation than PC.

I've heard these stories about Texas schools before and I'm glad I never had to deal with their regulations. Then again, my husband was a teacher so taking our kids out of school was kind of a moot point for us.

When sailing our of Galveston about half the ship is usually Texan, at least in our experience.

Yes, we pull our kids out of school. Yes, we have gotten annoying letters from the district (starting after 5 unexcused absences). If you get over 10 here, Imight be called before a board. I have no doubt that I could appropriately justify experiential learning. I'm also fine with my kid attending 2 weeks of summer school if that is the price we have to pay for a Hawaiian vacation in Dec. However, since my oldest has straight A's, top 5% of her class, and reads 4 years above her grade level, I can't imagine how they could justify holding her back a year--almost makes me want to call their bluff. :rolleyes1

Life is short. Take the trip. Make the memories while you can. Those will have so much more impact on our kids' lives than one more week of school. Deal with the real consequences (if they ever come), but don't worry too much about the 'what if's'.
 
So Texas can dictate what is excused and not excused for a school absence? Parents are not capable of this? How can a state be this controlling? Can you take your child out and homeschool them for vacation then re-enroll them?

When you enroll your child into a school, you do so accepting any and all rules/policies they have. It has always been the case in places where I lived that the school system determines what is or is not an excused school absence.
 
So Texas can dictate what is excused and not excused for a school absence? Parents are not capable of this? How can a state be this controlling? Can you take your child out and homeschool them for vacation then re-enroll them?
Because many parents are NOT capable of this. Just because one is a parent does not automatically mean they know or do what is best for their child. Being a great parent is admitting that at times you may not always know what is best for your child. This is why we havve professionals ( drs, teachers etc)
Not implying that parents who take their kids out of school are not good parents, but at some point schools need to set rules and guidelines for the greater good of children.
 
We live in Texas now and we never pull the kids out. The rules are strict and I hate to screw my kids over. They can literally hold them back if they miss a certain number of days even if they are legit (doctor, sick, etc). So I do not risk any unnecessary absences. It is really crazy. If you like to cruise, it is really hard because you are stuck paying peak prices or leaving your kids at home.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!







Top