Flights are cheaper on Saturday. Grandma's in Ohio. And somehow the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving feel optional.

If you've ever thought about tacking a couple days onto a holiday, you're not alone. This is one of the most common questions we get from Westside parents. And this year the stakes feel higher, because districts really, really want butts in seats.

Here's what actually happens, district by district, so you can make the call for your family.

Two words: money and learning.

California pays schools based on average daily attendance, so every empty seat costs the school money. LAUSD says its 2026-27 goal is 95% daily attendance.

To get there, the district has gone big. Superintendent Andres Chait has been knocking on doors himself for the annual back-to-school home visits. The district has also leaned on wraparound services to get kids to campus, including about 20 wellness centers on or near campuses and even mobile laundry. Pretty much every school has some version of an attendance incentive too, from raffles to the famous perfect-attendance popsicle.

Districts aren't wrong that it adds up. Kids who are out a lot fall behind. But a few days for a family trip is a different thing than a pattern of missing school, and that's where parents get stuck.

The day gets marked unexcused. In California, vacation isn't on the list of excused reasons. Your note just tells the school where your kid is.

3 unexcused absences (or tardies over 30 min) triggers a truancy letter. That's California's legal definition of truant, and in LAUSD the letter goes out automatically. It's a heads-up, not a fine. Things only escalate (meetings, attendance review boards) if absences keep stacking up. We broke down the whole notice in our truancy guide.

It counts toward chronic absenteeism. Missing 10% of the school year, about 18 days, makes a kid chronically absent. That's all absences, sick days included. A 3-day trip plus a bad flu season gets you closer than you'd think.

Makeup work isn't guaranteed. In Culver, district policy says kids with unexcused absences may get to make up work, but it's not guaranteed. Bigger deal for a high schooler before finals than for a kindergartner.

The popsicle is gone. So is the perfect-attendance certificate. Your kid will survive.

STIS is the closest thing to an "approved" vacation. Your kid gets a packet or assignments, does the work while you're away, turns it in when you're back, and those days count as attendance, not absences.

The catch: you have to ask early, sign an agreement before you go, and the work actually has to get done. If it doesn't, the days flip back to unexcused.

Spoiler: travel is good for kids. Missing school isn't great either. And nobody has studied the exact tradeoff parents are making.

Family trips are linked to better grades. A Penn State study using national data found kids who took at least one family trip in kindergarten or 3rd grade scored about 1% higher in 3rd grade reading and math. More trips, bigger bump. Museums and historical sites helped reading the most. Sporting events helped math. And "trips" included outings like these, so a day at the Getty counts too.

Kids come back with new skills. Researchers in Japan surveyed 217 families with elementary kids before and after a family vacation. Kids' general life skills went up afterward, and so did parents' well-being.

Kids with the least access gain the most. In a big lottery-based study of nearly 11,000 students, kids who got an art museum field trip showed gains in critical thinking, empathy and tolerance, and the effects were 2 to 3x larger for low-income, rural and minority students. That's a school trip, not a family vacation, but the takeaway is the same: exposure matters most for kids who don't get much of it.

The gap is real. High-income families spend way more on enrichment, and the biggest gaps are in travel, music lessons and summer camps.

The calendar makes it pricier. This year Thanksgiving airfare is at a 10-year high. Hopper says Mon 11/23 is the cheapest day to leave, and that's a school day in SMMUSD. Coming home Sun 11/29 averages about $604 round trip vs about $350 on Mon or Tues. That's roughly $250 a ticket, or about $1,000 for a family of 4, just for following the school calendar.

The other side. England's education department found every extra day missed is linked to lower test scores. But when Full Fact dug into the same data, the link for holidays specifically was mixed, and for 10 and 11 year olds, school-approved holidays actually showed a small positive link. None of it proves cause and effect either way.

Bottom line: the science backs up what a lot of parents already feel. Travel teaches. The catch is that the cheapest days to go often land on school days, and that hits families who can't pick their dates hardest.

Honestly, there's no one right answer. It depends on your kid, their grade and how the rest of the year is going.

A few things worth weighing:

Plenty of parents decide the time with grandparents is worth a truancy letter. Plenty decide it's not worth the stress. Both are fair.