What I Email the School When I Pull Lila Out for Travel

I have sent some version of this email about forty times. Forty is not an exaggeration; I went back and counted in my Sent folder for this post and the actual number is thirty-eight, but by the time you are reading this it will be forty. The email is short. It is not apologetic. It is not over-explained. The first one I ever sent, when Lila was in first grade, was eleven paragraphs long and read like a hostage note. I have learned.

This is the post I wish I had had in 2017. The script. The tone. The thing teachers actually want from you, which is not your feelings about whether the trip is justified, but a clean piece of administrative information they can file and forget. Here is how to write it.

The Email, Verbatim

This is the actual template I use, edited only to take Lila's school out. I copy and paste this every single time. It works. It has never gotten a no.

Subject: Lila Rosen — absence Oct 21–24

Hi Ms. [Advisor],

I wanted to let you know that Lila will be absent from school on Monday, October 21 through Thursday, October 24 for a family trip to Italy. She will return on Friday and be in class as usual on Monday the 28th.

Lila will keep up with assignments while she is away. If teachers can post the week's work to the portal as usual, she will complete it on the trip and turn it in on her return. She is happy to make up any quizzes or tests during office hours that week.

Please cc me on anything urgent. Thank you for your flexibility.

Best,
Em Rosen
Lila Rosen, Grade 9

What Each Line Is Doing

I want to walk through this because the choices matter:

The subject line has Lila's full name and the dates. It is not "absence question" or "quick note about Lila." It is the information the advisor needs to file the email correctly. Make her job easy.
"For a family trip" — three words. Not "a once-in-a-lifetime educational opportunity." Not "a culturally enriching experience." Schools deal in categories: illness, family obligation, family trip. Use the category. Do not editorialize.
The dates are exact and the return date is explicit. Do not say "around the 24th." Give them the day she is back in her seat.
"Lila will keep up with assignments" — present tense, declarative. This is a statement, not a request. You are not asking the school to do anything special.
The office-hours offer is the move. Teachers love this. It signals that you respect the inconvenience and that your kid is not above making it up.
No apology. Read the email again. There is no "sorry," no "I know this is short notice," no "I hope this is okay." Adults who travel for a job do not apologize for being out of the office. Treat school the same way.

What Teachers Actually Say Back

In nine years of doing this, the responses have fallen into three categories:

"Sounds great, have fun." — About 70%. They have a stack of these emails. Yours is one of them.
"Please make sure she completes [specific assignment] and we'll do [specific quiz] when she's back." — About 25%. This is the ideal. They are giving you the actual list. Do exactly what they say.
"What a wonderful opportunity!" — About 5%. These are the teachers who become Lila's favorites. They do not need the email to be apologetic; they need it to exist.

I have never, in thirty-eight emails, gotten a "no." I have never gotten a guilt trip. I have never gotten a lecture. The fear that you are going to is, I promise you, in your head.

The Bookmark Story

I have to tell this one. Lila was in seventh grade and we were doing the October Italy trip. Her humanities teacher was out for surgery and the substitute was a retired English teacher named Ms. K who had clearly read the absence form before Lila left and had decided to make a project of her. The day before we left, Ms. K stopped Lila in the hall and said, "Bring me back something cultural." That was the whole assignment. No rubric. No deadline.

Lila spent the whole trip looking. She was eleven. She was so serious about it. In Florence, on the third day, we wandered into a stationery shop on Via dei Servi — one of those old papeterie places with marbled paper and ribboned notebooks — and Lila bought a pressed-flower bookmark for two euros. A real flower, from somewhere in Tuscany, pressed under a glass laminate, with the name of the shop printed in small italic on the back. She brought it back. Ms. K cried at her desk. The bookmark lived in Ms. K's classroom for a year.

The point is not the bookmark. The point is that the school is, almost without exception, ready to meet your kid where she is.

The Things Not to Do

Do not email the principal. Email the advisor or the homeroom teacher. The principal does not need to know.
Do not list the cultural value of the trip. The school is not your audience for that. Save it for the playground moms.
Do not pull her out for the same week as a major test if you can help it. This is the one rule.
Do not lie. Do not call it a doctor's appointment. The school sees right through it and you have used up a card you do not need to use.
Do not over-promise on the makeup work. "She will keep up" is enough. "She will read four chapters a day on the trip" is a promise you will not keep.

The email is not the hard part. The hard part is the part of you that thinks you need permission. You do not. Schools handle absences. Teachers handle makeup work. Your kid handles, mostly, the math worksheet on the plane. Copy the script, change the dates, hit send, and book the flight. Lila has been pulled out forty times by my count and she is in ninth grade and she is fine, and the bookmark from the shop on Via dei Servi is still, last I checked, on Ms. K's desk in the room she retired out of two years ago. Send the email. Go.