Students are working tirelessly for the satisfaction of not waking up to the pestering sound of an alarm clock. After what seems to be a never-ending workload, students learn that this year winter break will be shortened from its original two-week length to only 11 days. This new winter break schedule deprives students of time to spend with friends and family and time to prepare for the next stretch of the school year.

The new schedule was made as an attempt to help Arlington Public Schools (APS) better align with the schedule of surrounding school districts. Under Development of the 2023-24 school year calendar, it states that “Fifty-two percent of APS staff live outside of Arlington … Aligning our schedules reduces the need for substitute teachers and ensures our staff is able to deliver high-quality instruction to students.”

However, our winter break fails to line up with other school districts like Fairfax and Alexandria City. This could create quite the predicament for teachers with children in other school districts, forcing them to either take days off work or find child care.

The new winter break also creates a problem for students who use this time as a way to disconnect from school and refocus for the remaining part of the school year.

“Winter break is a time we need to spend with our friends and family, and we need time to do more things and take a break from school and that’s not possible with a shortened winter break,” sophomore Serena Mansukhani said.

APS students are held to exemplary standards and have intense workloads that often exceed other school districts. It is only fair for students at our school to have an equal length winter break to other districts. The complaints of students are justified because of the academic stress they are put under.

Despite the problems the shortened winter break presents, it won’t be around very long. The new schedule for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years show a full two week winter break. This winter break also looks to coincide with surrounding school districts’ winter breaks.

While it may seem unfair and not follow other districts’ winter breaks, hopefully you can find some joy and comfort going into this shorter than usual break in the fact that it won’t always be this way.