Getting a day off... then fixing the whole schedule

A step-by-step guide to getting a schoolwide a day off, plus strategies for even bigger schedule change.

If there’s a holiday you want off, all it takes is a well-placed email. We helped Max Z., who goes to a public school in Massachussets, get a scheduled day off to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Here's how:

Max leveraged a key reality about schedules: while you need to have 180 days in the school year, there are dozens of “FLEXIBLE” days when teachers have “professional development,” mandatory training that can take a whole school day.

Here’s the email he sent to his principal.

Be ready to meet in person, too. When Max saw his principal in the halls a few days after sending the email, he stopped the principal, quickly making a pitch just like in the short, clear email. The principal asked Max to schedule a meeting with his secretary (if you don’t bump into the principal like this, asking the principal’s secretary in the Main Office to schedule a meeting right away is a great strategy).

It worked! Day off! But that’s half the story. Max first reached out for several teachers and student clubs for help. All of them were excited about the idea, but nobody *actually* helped. Max had the idea for a day off over the summer and didn’t implement it until May: between schoolwork, sports, and the stress that came from not getting support, he had a lot on his plate. Finally, Max leveraged his strong relationship with his English teacher to get the support he needed, asking the teacher to give him feedback on the email he’d been drafting. 

But the change won’t be implemented until next year. Change in school is slow. Even if you achieve it now, it probably won’t be put in place until next year.

Max is working to achieve the same change statewide. His principal didn’t even have the authority for a one-school schedule change, running it by the superintendent first… so imagine how high up the ladder you have to climb to get the change made statewide. 

Max asked his principal who to reach out to (a former chair of the state senate’s joint committee on education), and found their email.

• He wrote a clear, short explanation of why the holiday is important.
• He researched whether a similar change had been implemented in other districts and states.
• He bragged a little, describing what motivated him to make it a holiday in his school.

But… schedules do change a lot. And fast. We visited a school district that changed its bell schedule 13 times in one year. 

[Note: Meanwhile, many private schools eliminated bells years ago (because they make you feel like you’re in prison, and because it’s fair to trust you to come to class on time anyway.)]

This is an indicator of dysfunction. Nobody is strong enough to take power in the system, and even control over the schedule keeps going back and forth.

Schedule change can be controversial: Take school start times. Research has shown that teenagers are healthier, happier, and more successful when they get to sleep in, so many parents and education researchers have advocated for later school start times.

But. 

Even though this change is good for student wellbeing, it can be incredibly impractical:

• School is kind of just… daycare: if there’s a gap between when parents go to work and students go to school, that can mean an expensive baby-sitter or an unaccounted-for kid.
• Since parents can’t drive their kids to school anymore, will you be able to find bus drivers willing to work different hours? Will you have to pay them more?
• School will just go later into the day in most districts (when the day should really be shortened for this to work). Everything gets pushed back and students go to bed even later. 

They tried this all in California, mandating later start times at the state level. The impact was mixed and the daycare was incredibly expensive.

More importantly, school communities have a four year memory. If a school locks that door that seniors use to walk out of school mid-day to take a break, everyone, including the freshmen, will be bummed that they lost the privilege, even if the staff try to explain it’s a safety issue. After the freshmen graduate, no student will remember that door. Nobody will be upset. The principal and teachers will probably be the same, and they “win” a safer school. Because of their longevity, they can easily invest in making the long term, beneficial change.

Superintendents and school board members usually have a five year term or less, and their jobs are public-facing, so always at risk. Parents only care as long as their students are students.

Principals and teachers are uniquely permanent. IF your school has high teacher turnover (a lot of teachers quit, a lot of the time), that means nobody in your school has a memory. Does this help explain the dysfunction?

You can fight—and win—against your system just by having a memory. Knowing how to navigate your institution better than anyone else is enough to win: create a student organization dedicated to reforming your school and make sure you have a strong succession plan: recruit new students actively and buy them ice cream sometimes so they’ll stay. Create clear, actionable-based explanations of how your system works (like this resource). Decide what long term policy changes you want to implement, and accept that they might not happen while you’re a student… but that the thousands of students who come after you will thank you.

If you want to dive into scheduling, you can start here and move here when you’re ready. It might seem complicated, but it’s all about making allies, listening to what they need, and finding ways to compromise… without forgetting all the leverage you have as a student.