JOHN CAWKWELL
Dear Ms. Colgan, Mr. Jaurigue, Ms. Specter, Ms. Bernstein, Ms. Wyman, Ms. Guy, and Mr. Payne,
My name is John, and I am a student who has always appreciated the long summer break at the end of the school year. I am reaching out because it is increasingly seeming like summer break will be shortened by the adoption of calendars B or C. Although calendars B and C do maintain roughly the same amount of break days per year as calendar A, by cutting that break time from the summer and placing it in the middle of the school year, those calendars hinder the opportunities students have to spend extended periods of time with their families during the summer, and thus, calendar A should be selected as the calendar of the upcoming school year.
I, like many other students in this district, greatly value the existence of an extended summer break at the end of the year since it provides the ideal opportunity to visit family abroad. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Los Alamos county has a much larger foreign-born population than its neighbors, with 8.9% of its population being foreign born compared to Sandoval's 4.9% and Rio Arriba’s 4.8%. As the child of two foreign-born parents, I personally have found that the extended summer break of the current calendar is incredibly beneficial when it comes to visiting my relatives. With a long summer break, I can spend 6-8 weeks with my grandparents in Europe using only one set of plane flights. Though calendar A does slightly cut into the current summer time, with a summer of 9 weeks long, it still provides such an opportunity, in contrast to calendars B and C, which decrease the length of summer by one and two weeks respectively. Even if it is true that calendars B and C provide other opportunities to see family during the middle school year, breaks in the middle of the school year are not as ideal of an opportunity for students like me in comparison to a traditional summer break. The primary reason for this is that, if families were to spend time with their families during both a shorter summer and during a mid-school-year break, they would have to purchase twice the plane tickets for the same amount of time outside the country that they could have achieved in a longer summer break. This would cost the families more money, and overall make the time spent with foreign families more expensive. Additionally, since going to Europe or Asia requires several days of travel, while also causing days of difficulty adapting to the new time zones due to jet-lag, short trips to those places are not practical, especially in comparison to one to two month long travels where people have plenty of time to become used to the new time zones. Thus, from the perspective of students who wish to visit their families abroad, calendar A provides many more opportunities than either of the other two calendars.
I am currently worried that, due to the possible selection of either calendar B or C, my younger siblings will spend less time with their relatives in Europe than I did. My grandparents, too, would find themselves seeing their grandchildren progressively less. This is a future that I, as well as other students in similar situations, do not want to see become a reality. Thus, the school board should select calendar option A for the upcoming school year, and continue to select calendars with the longest possible summer breaks from now on.
Thank you so much for reading this email. I hope it finds you well, and I hope that you take it into consideration when you are making your final decisions for the upcoming school year.
With gratitude,
John F. Cawkwell
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