Family

It’s like the scholastic equivalent of The Rapture.

Come Monday morning everywhere across Calhoun County, desks and cubicles, break rooms and office hallways will be noticeably empty as if those who once held coffee cups, tapped on computer keyboards and slammed filing cabinet doors were mysteriously whisked away, leaving confused friends and co-workers to ponder … “Where did everybody go?”

And then slowly, it dawns to those left behind — must be fall break.

Every October, generally around Columbus Day, thousands of students and teachers across the state are rewarded for their nine weeks’ worth of tests, hard work and homework with a weeklong vacation.

“It’s a nice break,” says Caryn Waugh, a second-grade teacher at Saks Elementary School. “It’s well timed, because the kids are getting tired of you and, in a way, you’re getting tired of the kids. This is just a good way to step back and regroup.”

If spring break is synonymous with suntan lotion and pink, peeling skin, fall break — at least for some parents — is synonymous with pleading calls to grandparents and darkened squares on calendars where school days should logically appear.

“It always sneaks up on me,” says Stacy Miller, who has three kids sprinkled throughout the Anniston City School system. “To be honest, I’m dreading it.”

Wandering through Wal-Mart while her youngest daughter Hailey picks through racks of Crayons and colored pens, Miller seems to grow steadily more frustrated at the thought of what to do with her kids during fall break.

Leaving them at home, alone and unsupervised, isn’t an option.

“They’d burn the house down,” she says with a humorless laugh. “It’s the same thing every year. Either my husband or I will have to take time off. It’s not much of a vacation when it’s forced.

“I’d love to know where this idea came from.”

Blame New England.

According to Jacksonville City Schools superintendent Eric Mackey, the idea of a fall break filtered down from school systems in New England, which carved out time alongside with local colleges and universities.

“But when it got to Alabama,” Mackey says on his way back to Jacksonville from a meeting in Montgomery, “it spread like wildfire.”

The reason for a fall break is simple: Students must spend at least 180 days in school.

“And it’s sort of this unwritten rue among superintendents that you need a minimum of 130 days of instruction before taking the high-stakes tests in the spring,” Mackey says. “Plus, in the South, there’s this unwritten rule you have to be out before Memorial Day.

Mackey says, oddly enough, there are actually only two days, by law, when school must close — Veterans Day and Memorial Day. And with most area schools starting around Aug. 14 or 15, “when we added fall break, we backed up five days.”

The holiday is totally up to the individual school boards, who create their own calendars each year. Mackey estimates that of the 134 school systems in Alabama, “at least half” have some form of a fall break. While not all take a full week, some have extended three- and four-day weekends. For example, kids in Talladega had Friday and Monday of last week out, which just happened to coincide with the races at the motor speedway.

In Jacksonville, which was among the first school systems in Alabama to have a fall break, it was actually a parent-led initiative. Mackey, who at the time was an elementary school principal, served on the committee when Jacksonville first put together the calendar that included a fall break back for the school year of 1999-2000.

The committee consisted of 20 or so parents, teachers and school administrators. Together they sent out a poll to all the parents with kids in the school system, who voted by 60 to 65 percent in favor of trying a fall break, which was implemented during the 2000-01 school year.

The initial response was overwhelming.

“They loved it,” Mackey says. “It was something like 80 to 85 percent of parents were in favor of it and they wanted to keep it. So this all started and stayed because it was the parents who wanted to keep it.

“It’s funny to think back, because now it’s the parents you hear who don’t want it.”

Ashley Dorsett would simply like to have been asked.

With two kids in schools in Pleasant Valley, under the Calhoun County school system, Dorsett, like so many moms and dads, has already started making those frantic calls to grandparents in hopes that they can keep the kids for a few days.

“And you hate to ask, because we already rely on them for so much,” she says. “But now there’s no choice. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

“When you work and can’t take time off, you’ve got to find someplace for them to go.”

Though it’s written out on the school calendar, the reality of fall break never seems to sink in until the week before, leaving Dorsett scrambling for child care. But that’s not necessarily the hardest part.

“It always feels like school’s only just started and now they’re getting out again,” Dorsett says. “It’s stressful … for the parents. And honestly, I don’t think they need it … seems like they haven’t had time to be under enough stress to need a break already.

“Plus, we’ve only gotten our routine down. Now, we’ll just have to start all over.”

As assistant principal, one of Courtney Wilburn’s main duties at White Plains Elementary School is doling out discipline to those in need. And for her, the need for a fall break is obvious.

“Before the break, we tend to have an abundant need for discipline,” she says with a burst of laughter. “But when they come back, we can all really tell a difference. This gives them just a little bit of downtime, a chance to reflect and regroup before getting ready to go again.”

And as much as the students, it’s the teacher who can also use the time to rejuvenate before hunkering down for another long stretch of academic achievement.

“I really see it as a positive thing all around,” Wilburn says. “It keeps teacher morale up and gives them a real boost when they come back.”

For Waugh, this year will be a bit different. Rather than a week, she won’t be returning to Saks Elementary until well after Christmas because instead of heading off to Gatlinburg, where the family usually goes during fall break, she’ll be heading for the Labor and Delivery ward of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham.

Waugh is due to deliver her second child, Jace Carter, on Oct. 22. But even with a new baby on the way, she’s still a teacher at heart.

“They’ve worked hard and deserve the break,” Waugh says, adding that she understands the difficulty some parents might have finding child care. “It’ll take a couple of days for them to get back in a routine again, but the benefits will last a long time.

“But they need to stay engaged, even if it is on vacation. Reading can be done anywhere and anytime — not just at school.”

Of course, fall break isn’t necessarily dreaded by all parents — only those who face certain child care challenges in the absence of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. school attendance. Some parents, like Jessica Brown, look forward to the break because it allows for family time — free from the stresses of homework and bedtimes.

Of course Brown is also “blessed” by the fact that she’s a stay-at-home mother.

“So it’s fun for me because we get a lot of downtime together,” says Brown, who has two daughters, 9 and 14, both of whom are enrolled in Heflin schools. “This is something I look forward to. We usually try and get out of town, to get away from all the stress and just enjoy everybody being together.”

Like so many parents, the Brown family will be heading towards the beaches, a fact that makes people like Mike Foster, thankful.

It’s not just students and teacher who benefit from Alabama’s fall break. It’s also the state’s tourism business - museums, state parks, beaches and other attractions will be bustling over the next few weeks as thousands of parents desperately search for something to do.

“Anytime we get groups of people coming down, particularly during the off season, it’s very, very good for us,” says Foster, adding that only 40 to 45 percent of revenue is generated during the summer. “And that doesn’t keep the waiters and waitresses paid throughout the whole year. It’s important that we look at all kids of avenues to generate revenue down here.

“Fall break helps pay a lot of bills.”

For all its initial success among Jacksonville parents, it would seem that opinions and the popularity are shifting. A poll taken two years ago showed that only about 60 percent of parents were in favor of fall break.

Now a committee formed by the PTOs from both the high school and elementary school are revisiting the idea and have drafting a proposal that could change fall break from a week to a three-day weekend in October with the leftover days tacked on to the Thanksgiving holiday.

The group tossed the idea out to parents, suggesting that anyone with questions or comments email Superintendent Mackey, who then spent well over an hour reading and responding to various emails. Mackey estimates that the responses were “easily” 3-to-one in favor of the change.

“Fall break is something parents feel very strongly about,” says Mackey, who, despite being school superintendent, doesn’t get fall break himself. “One way or another, everybody wants some sort of break.

“We try, but you just can’t please everybody.”