The Senior Skip Day Conversation: A Park City Mom's Honest Take

I want to be careful with this post because I know how PC works — somebody's principal will read it, somebody's mother-in-law will text it to somebody, and I will get an opinion from a person I have never met at the Whole Foods coffee bar. Fine. I'm doing it anyway, because if you have a senior in any of the PC-area high schools right now, you are having some version of this conversation in your kitchen this week and I think we should talk about it more honestly than we usually do.

The conversation is about senior skip day. Specifically the unofficial one — not a school-sanctioned day off, but the one the seniors organize themselves, the one that for a lot of years has converged on a warm afternoon at Jordanelle sometime in May, the one where a hundred-plus seventeen-and-eighteen-year-olds end up at the reservoir doing things that are objectively not legal and have been going on, in some form, since long before we moved here in 2002.

high school hallway — Senior year goes faster than people warn you about. We picked our battles early.

What Jax actually asked

Jax came to me — and this part I want to flag, because it surprised me — he came to me directly. He didn't sneak it. He didn't lie. He sat down at the kitchen counter on a Tuesday and said, "I want to do the Jordanelle day with my class. I'm telling you because I'd rather you know." Reader, I almost cried. Then I did the parental version of a poker face and said "let me think about it and talk to Dad."

Mark and I went and sat on the back deck at Promontory that evening with a bottle of something and we talked it through. I'm going to walk you through where we landed because the framework, more than the specific decision, is the part I think might be useful.

teen filming outdoors — Jax skipped one Friday this year to scout drone shots in Capitol Reef — that was the deal we made.

The factors we weighed

1. Are the grades locked?

Jax is a senior in May. He has been admitted to USC (yes, file that one — I will update). His final transcript will be sent. The marginal academic impact of a single missed school day in May of senior year is functionally zero. If we were having this conversation in November, my answer would be different. The timing matters.

2. What's the actual risk profile?

This is the harder one. Jordanelle in May means seniors swim. The water is cold. There is, historically, alcohol. There is, occasionally, law enforcement. The risk is real. I am not pretending it isn't. We talked about it specifically — driving, drinking, water safety, who's the designated, what's the plan if something goes sideways. Jax had answers. He'd thought about it. (He's been to two weddings as a junior groomsman in the past year — he is not a sheltered kid about adult logistics.)

3. Is this a rite of passage or just a vibe?

This is the philosophical part. Some traditions are real. Some are just inertia. Senior skip day at Jordanelle, for the kids who grew up in PCSD, is the closing-ceremony of thirteen years of school together. The kid who sat next to my kid in kindergarten will be at the reservoir on that day. They will not all be in the same place again. I take that seriously, in a way I would not have taken it seriously a decade ago.

4. The hypocrisy check

Mark and I have pulled this kid out of school for a USC visit. We have pulled him out for fall-break trips. We have, frankly, normalized the idea that there are educational and developmental experiences worth missing a school day for. If we have done that, can we really turn around and say "no, but THIS day, this specific cultural ceremony with your peers, that one's not allowed"? It would not pass the test.

ski slope sunny day — PC senior skip day is, predictably, a powder day. The school knows. Everyone knows.

Where we landed

We told Jax he could go. With conditions. He's not driving. We're driving him and picking him up at a defined time. He is not drinking, full stop, and if I find out otherwise we will have a different conversation entirely. He is checking in with one text per hour. He's wearing the rashguard he wore to Hanalei Bay last summer because the water is cold and I am still his mother.

He agreed. Easily. Because he was not trying to get away with anything — he was trying to be included in a real moment with his class.

The broader question — pulling teens out of school

Now I want to widen this out, because I read this blog (I write for it, but I also read it — solidarity), and I know there is a strong contingent on the network making the case for pulling kids out of school for travel. I see the elementary-school moms making that argument and I am with them. I have done it. I will do it again.

But I also think with teens it is different, and I want to say why.

Younger kids. A second-grader pulled out for a Costa Rica week is gaining language exposure, family bonding, life experience, and missing nothing of academic substance that can't be made up in twenty minutes of catch-up. Pull them out. I'm pro.

Middle schoolers. Marginal call. Depends on the kid, the trip, the class. I have done it for a Charleston long weekend. I have not done it for a beach week. Use judgment.

High schoolers in the first three years. Hard. The academic load is real. The teacher relationships matter. The college-app calendar is closing in. I have pulled mine for college visits and family weddings. I have not pulled them for spring-break extensions or convenience.

Seniors. Different animal. By the spring of senior year, the kid is already mentally elsewhere. They are pulling themselves out — emotionally, socially, in their attention. The senior-skip-day conversation is happening because the kids are already in the doorway leaving. Our job at this stage is not to control the exit. It's to make sure the exit is safe and the kid still tells us things on Tuesday nights at the kitchen counter.

Main Street morning — Main Street on a school-day morning — the senior signature on the breakfast tab is its own kind of yearbook page.

What I'd say to another PC senior parent right now

Have the conversation. Don't pretend it's not happening.
Separate the question of "is this skip-day the right thing" from "do we trust our kid." Those are two different questions.
Set conditions, in writing, that you can both live with.
Don't moralize. Your senior is not a sixth-grader. They've heard your values for eighteen years. They know.
Be the parent who gets the truth, not the parent who gets a clean story.

The thing I'm not going to say

I'm not going to tell you what your kid should do. I'm not going to tell you what we'll do with Maddie when she's a senior — I genuinely don't know yet, she's a different kid in a different moment. I'm telling you what we did with this kid, this year, and the framework we used, because I wish someone had given me one when I was sitting on the deck with Mark trying to figure it out.

The day will happen in a few weeks. He'll come home, probably sunburned, probably with stories he'll tell us a redacted version of. He'll graduate. He'll go to USC. He'll come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and we'll go through this whole calendar again with one kid instead of two, and then in three years with no kids at all. I am not crying. The aspens haven't even leafed out yet. I'm fine. — Tricia P.