Tick, tock, tick, tock. The clock on classroom walls slowly count down as periods pass by. Almost every North Atlanta student is just waiting for Wednesday afternoon for Fall Break to begin to take them away from the stress and pressure of school. Most of them, however, are in for a rude awakening. APS’ new schedule only gives five days off: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. This may seem like a lot of time off, however, in past years, schools have been given a whole week off. This means APS students used to get five school days plus two weekends off and more time to enjoy themselves tanning by the beach or chilling at home.
One of the main reasons why the Fall Break this year is terrible is that it barely gives a break to students. Five days is not enough to relax. Most teachers assign some amount of homework over the break to keep their students caught up. This means that most students looking to travel will have to finish all of their work early or procrastinate until the very last minute to do it. Not only that, a lot of students play sports or do activities outside of school on the weekends, meaning that people would only have about two days to relax before heading back into the daily grind. This “break” is scarcely even a break for most, especially those looking to keep up in school. Freshman Brian Feagin doesn’t understand why APS can’t give students the full week off. “We started school really early this year, so I think we have enough time to have a full week off,” Feagin said.
A glaring issue that also pops up concerning this break is that the only real “break” we get is Thursday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday are weekend dates, and we are already off for those days anyways. Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which everyone is already required to be off on. It feels like APS purposely chose this to be the weekend we get off so that we didn’t get as many breaks as we usually do. Junior Camille Evans was especially angry over this. “It’s very annoying that they chose this week to be the one we get off,” said Evans. “I wish we could have more time for Fall Break because I would really like to have a longer and more fun break.”
Whether you’re relaxing by the beach this fall break or enjoying yourself in the mountains, there’s no doubt that you would enjoy a longer break. Regardless if APS intended to make the Fall Break so short or not, students deserve to have a longer, refreshing break, especially after the chaos that occurred last year. Hopefully, all North Atlanta students enjoy their fall break, even if it’s not as long as we previously anticipated.