It’s not just my county. I know people from all over with the same restrictions. They (where I live) also just started a new rule where the school gets in trouble if too many kids are out sick. So the principal came out at an assembly and basically begged us to start sending our kids to school sick because they don’t lose the day if the school nurse sends the child home. I think this is a new state rule. I realize I’ve digressed here from the topic of vacations but to me it’s part of my process. I also don’t take kids out much in case one gets really sick and misses a lot of school. That would be excused but it wouldn’t look good if they’d missed earlier.
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I had appalling attendance in school. I was a competitive figure skater and would take anywhere from 2 - 5 days off school for competitions regularly. I also trained in the mornings before school, and would often skip the first hour or two of school to stay and skate in an emptier rink. My parents were fine with it, I was a straight A student, always in honors or AP classes. My sophomore year of high school my social studies teacher (first period) approached me and let me know that if I missed 2 more days of his class I would fail. My average in the class at the time was probably in the 93 - 95 range. Fortunately my family had the resources and the next year I switched to a private school that received no state funding and was therefore not subject to any attendance requirements. Actually, several local competitive skaters ended up at this school! One of my favorite memories was my senior year when my friend and I were taking a week off not to compete, but to simply go watch Nationals. We sat down with the principal to discuss it and she asked us something along the lines of if we thought it was an acceptable reason to miss that much school. We said yes and that was that!
I understand that there is a purpose for attendance requirements. But when the student and parent are both clearly being responsible about the situation, I think that parents should have control over the decision.
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I remember classes where students would be exempt from the final if they had only missed a certain number of classes. So there I would sit with my A in the class, clearly grasping the class content despite my absences, and the kids with Bs and Cs were rewarded simply for showing up. I guess it was the early version of participation trophies!
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There is a strong correlation between attendance and achievement, and schools are held accountable for both.
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I am not looking forward to being held to a school calendar to the point that I have considered options beyond public school.
To someone’s point above, yes school may offer a few breaks but in jobs like mine (healthcare) I rarely get those days off. I get spring break off every 7 years. Christmas/New years I only get 2 days off those 2 weeks every 5 years. I have to request summer weeks off 2 years in advance. All of this is coordinated with my husband’s call schedule (about 20 weeks per year). So yeah, my kids will get breaks but no guarantee anyone else in our family can travel then!
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We’ve switched to a private school this year but it’s basically the same rules as the private school mostly follows the county. I don’t think they want your kids to come to school sick however. That was a new public school restriction.
We’ve homeschooled our kids all the way from K through 12th. Two have graduated (oldest graduated from college at 19 years old, in fact), so we have three left. We take vacations whenever we very well please…which is generally when crowds are at their lowest! 
When I was growing up, I was in a program through elementary school called 45-15. 45 days of school, 15 days off, year round. The trouble was the 15 days off didn’t line up with the breaks my siblings had in middle and high school, so I was always the one taken out of school for our trips. Back in those days, the teacher would just assign you something like, “Make a journal of each day of your trip, highlighting what you saw along the way.” That kind of thing.
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Not all public schools share the same sentiment. Ours has no issue with DS taking a few days for trips. I worried as he moved to middle school that would change, but when I talked to the principal, he said as long as a child is doing well in school, he has no issue with them missing a few days. They were wonderful when he missed a day in a half in November, and he’s missing one in April coming back from April vacation (his comment was that the flights are so much cheaper the day after school vacation ends). And DS is a high honors student - I see no issues with him missing a day or two here and there!
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Our oldest is in 3rd grade this year and my husband still hates being held to the school calendar!! 
We are in what our school calls a “classical, collaborative, Christian” model. The collaborative part is that our kids are in a regular classroom setting two days a week and at home two days with a day of homeschool work (which lines up with what the teachers do in the classroom on the other two days). Fridays are 100% elective days and optional. So, our kids have to be there M/W but we’ve got some nice flexibility in that we can leave to go somewhere Wednesday afternoon, pack our homeschool work for Thursday, make it home by Sunday evening and the kids don’t miss any days. Even still, I think DH would prefer if we 100% homeschooled.
I think taking them out of school is fine, honestly. It’s not like you’re going to do it more than two(ish) times a year anyway. We took the kids out for a week in February but it’ll probably be a long time before I do that again. Not because the school gave us trouble (they didn’t) but just because it was a stressful beating getting 3 kids to make up a week of work.
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Yes, seriously. My husband is a firefighter and only recently has gotten enough senority to get the highly coveted time slots for vacation. Summers are peak season for him, so not an option for us. In our school district we have many first responders in a similar situation. Fortunately our district has a generous policy and we can take our children out for “home studies” and they can do their work remotely. I realize we are very lucky to have this benefit.
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This sounds like an awesome option & a great blend of flexibility and structure. I don’t think we’ve got anything similar around here though. Downside of living in a rural LCOLA!
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I have to admit that part of what motivates me to not take my kids out for vacation is the articles I see all the time about parents being arrested for not sending their kids to school. If you google it you’ll find several examples, and some will be specific to vacations. I realize that this is unusual and most of the time the school would be ok with it…but, what if.
Retail employment in a summer vacation destination location = no vacation during school summer break.