HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee—Certain aspects of student break calendars will always be the same in the U.S.
Across the country, all students are guaranteed to be out of session on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and continuing through New Year’s Day. In rare cases, even days that are not inherently holidays such as the day after Thanksgiving are a lock for family travel opportunities.
Other periods are far more variable, however, and can shift dramatically from region to region, or even from state to state within a region. Data pulled from STR’s School Break Report (2019-2020) reveals that even seemingly small differences in vacation calendars can lead to significant changes in student travel availability, thus family travel opportunities. (STR is the parent company of Hotel News Now.)
With a particular focus on the rapidly approaching holiday break, the graphic below shows the statewide calendar patterns for three of the most populated states—California, Florida and New York—during December and January. The darker the shading, the higher the proportion of students who are on vacation, and therefore available to travel.
At first glance, there may not appear to be much difference between the three states. But by paying special attention to the first full week of January, one can see the particularly stark contrast between California and New York (with Florida falling somewhere in between).
Visualized another way, the proportions of public school students (kindergarten through 12th grade) who are still on break and available to travel varies by a notable margin starting 2 January and trailing through the entire next week.
Well over 80% of New York students move back into session starting 2 January (Thursday), while across the board California and Florida students remain on break through the weekend. The vast majority of Floridians will have made their way back into the classrooms by Tuesday, 7 January, but a lingering (and substantial) contingent of Californians won’t be back until Monday, 13 January.
Just how large of a contingent, one might ask? The chart below mirrors the chart above, but shows actual raw population counts covered by STR’s public school district calendar collection process.
The 4.7 million students covered in California represents approximately 76% of the total public school district population (kindergarten through 12th grade) in the state. The 2.7 million students covered in Florida represents nearly 97% of the Sunshine State’s public school population and the 1.2 million covered in New York accounts for about 46% of their population.
The School Break Report, a forward-looking tool utilized to plan for vacation hotel demand, includes information for 1,500+ public school districts (60% of all students) and 1,000+ four-year universities (73% of all students) in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Licenses can be purchased by contacting info@str.com.
Brannan Doyle is a research analyst with STR’s Market Insights division.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by STR, parent company of HNN. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.