I couldn't agree more with everything you say here.

Every year we get the nasty "your kid has missed an unacceptable number of days" letters from their schools (at 5 days off and 10 days off respectively), simply because when we get sicknesses, they tend to be 2-3 days each time, and I believe in not sending sick kids to school.

Meanwhile rich kids in our district miss tons of school due to being on sports travel teams (and they leave for tournaments on Fridays), as well as international travel, and nobody seems to bother them about it (or else they don't care, rich people operate differently). I volunteer in the school and before the winter holidays one teacher told me, "yeah, we try to teach them on Monday and Tuesday...but the last three days of the week before the break are mostly just "fun days.""

Our school district wastes all kinds of my kids' time. But meanwhile I'm made to feel like a failure if they get 3-4 illnesses per winter/spring, which is entirely average, and if I keep them out of school so as to help the health of others. All these big, impersonal systems with stupidly applied rules are making me crazy.

Hope you all have as healthy a January and new year as possible--