We don't have snow days so I always wondered (at least since I became a parent) how can a family plan a vacation when they don't know if the school year will be extended.

Of course, we had a complication this last summer when the school district my daughter is in was going to switch to an August start date (which really makes great sense here where it's over 100 degrees even in September). Some high schools were switched over for the 2010-2011 year, but all the schools were going to switch this year. Because of budget cuts and teacher contracts that needed to be negotiated, it was decided to postpone the switchover. As my daughter was moving on to high school this year, I sent an email to our school board member about when her school was starting as her website was pretty vague. All but one of the local high schools (the exception was a new school) would start August 15 or 16. As my daughter was taking summer school, she ended up with only two weeks off between the end of summer school and her new school (and the summer school started the Monday after 8th grade ended for her). So no time for any vacation.

She gets out the in early June, but now she's planning to take classes again. Right now, we don't know when the community colleges will offer classes (assuming she can go there) or the college program she went to last summer (which was very expensive). It makes it hard to try to plan a trip, if we could squeeze one in (the one we're thinking about would easily take three weeks).

But she can't take off time during school as she is in a heavy duty academic program (they have to take science and math all four years and are expected to take honors classes this year and eventually some AP classes the last three years).