An Opinion Piece: How Does Fall Break Affect the Unit 4 Community?

The school board worked together with the help of teachers and administration to give Unit 4 students and staff our 2023 fall break on October 12th – 20th. All Unit 4 schools will have a fall break because of the removal of a balanced calendar. Fall break gives students and staff a break from school and allows students and staff to really relax and be able to come back to school refreshed and ready to work, but is fall break truly beneficial to everyone? 

Fall break is a new thing this year and with all new things comes new opinions.

You would think there were only positive opinions about the fall break. Fall break gives students the mental break that their brain needs, it gives them time to catch up on needed sleep and family time. 

When asked if this break was necessary, a science teacher at Champaign Central High School, Aubrey Wachtel says, “Yes […] This fall break comes along with a shift where those schools with balanced calendars are no longer balanced […] They should have had a three-week break during this time so we need to at least give them one because they planned on having that time.” 

Wachtel has a point. We should be making up that time for those schools that didn’t get the promised break. Wachtel wants fairness for those year-round schools but not only that, she’s “looking forward to seeing how the fall break cuts down on burnout [In Unit 4 students and staff].” 

Even some students, like senior Madison Lewis, think the fall break is helpful for students. While being interviewed she said, “It’s a lot [school] and students need that break to help with the mental strain of it all.” 

As a student here at Central High, I experience much more mental strain than I’d like to. With so much work inside and outside of school, a small break like this would be more than helpful. 

But not everyone thinks the fall break is ultimately beneficial. Listening to the voice of a Unit 4 parent makes that all too clear. Rin Dillow, a parent of four Unit 4 students is very opinionated on the topic of the new fall break. 

“As a parent, it throws my schedule in the garbage disposal. It makes it challenging because it’s not a consistent break. With these random chunks of breaks, we need to have a random five days of childcare or completely disrupt our schedules to align with the break.” 

From a parents’ perspective, I think many would agree with Dillow because with disrupted schedules comes disrupted children that parents now have to deal with. 

“It’s appropriate timing[the break] because it corresponds to the end of the first quarter,” Wachtel explains when asked about timing. The timing couldn’t be better, but after speaking to students, staff, and parents, it’s clear that the opinions on the new fall break are all but similar. As a community, we have to try it and later ask ourselves if it should be repeated or something we should never have again.