As students checked their calendars heading into the 2024-2025 school year, they noticed a nice surprise. For the first time, in addition to the over two week standard Christmas Break, there was a new Winter Break from February 14th-19th.

According to DePaul College Prep Principal Dr. Stanton-Anderson, the break was created since February is usually a hard month for students. She attributes this to the fact that “we can’t get outside as much as we’d like. It’s usually pretty gray” and said that the reason behind this break was primarily for social emotional reasons, especially because “the second semester always feels a lot longer.” 

Director of Student Activities Chris Petersen agreed that the break was created to help students emotionally and believes that rather than being influenced by other private schools taking a winter break, it was implemented to help DePaul Prep students and faculty. 

In terms of carving out the time for the break, Stanton-Anderson said that it was not hard because there is always a professional development day off before Presidents’ Day, which has always been a day off, so they “decided to extend it by two days, just to call it like a mid winter break.” 

Stanton-Anderson hopes that this break helps students feel rejuvenated. This break also helps make the second semester seem less daunting with time off in January for Christmas Break, now with this break in February, Spring Break in March and Easter Break in April. This makes it so that every month until May, the end of the school year, has a significant time off. 

Stanton-Anderson says that the group behind the new break were the leadership team. This includes, along with Stanton-Anderson, President Mary Dempsey, Assistant Principals Joseph Voss and Maria Hill and other members of administration. They had been planning it for about a year and a half, since they usually plan the school year a year in advance, but talks had been going back even further for the break. 

Petersen reiterated that the break provided time for students to relax and unwind, saying how students are “out of gas.” He thinks it was a smart choice because of the already long weekend. 

Petersen said that so far, feedback has been positive from both students and teachers and that the break is already back on the calendar for next year. 

Senior Alex Kim said that he was “extremely excited” after learning about the break thinking it was during the perfect time since “between the end of winter break and spring break can be tough and exhausting.” 

He took the opportunity to visit a college, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and went skiing as well. The break allowed for students to engage in winter activities, such as skiing, without missing school while also allowing juniors and seniors to have more opportunities to look at colleges. 

Kim said that he heard about the break at the Dean’s meeting at the start of the year and how it was explained that the break was implemented because “it can get a little rough in the month of February” after Christmas Break with “just straight school and no breaks” and remembers how administration said “we wanted to implement this break to help you [the students]”. 

Sophomore Addison Alamo also appreciated having the break saying that when she learned about it on the announcements she “felt really happy.” She supports the break because of how February can be hard since “it’s right after break and there’s new material, and you have to start preparing a little bit for finals, but not too much.” She was able to take the time to relax for a few days such as sleeping in and did not have a lot of homework. She is looking forward to the winter break again next year. 

Despite this Kim feels that even though “coming back to school  after a break is never fun,” he’s “still glad that we had this break.”

Stanton Anderson echoed sentiments about it never being easy coming back from break, saying that she had fears “students [won’t] come to school on Thursday and Friday, but we intentionally wanted to have one red day, one blue day.”

In the end, according to Assistant Dean of Students Dillion Snead, attendance the Thursday and Friday after break, compared to other Thursdays and Fridays, only differed by 1%.

Despite these concerns, Winter Break seems to be a new annual occurrence at DePaul Prep that will hopefully make the dreary winter months a little less drab.