I don't know where people keep getting this "three months off" idea.
My wife is a high school teacher here in Connecticut, and so are both of her parents, her brother and his wife, and her aunt. For my wife, Final Exams end this year on June 20. She has to come in the next day to submit final grades.
In August, classes will start up again around August 27th. In that time span, she has a mandatory 1 week training & curriculum development workshop she is required to attend. She doesn't get paid at all during the months of July or August, so it's not exactly a vacation, more of a "temporary layoff."
Teachers don't get to choose when to take vacations, unlike people in most other professions who, a month or two ahead of time, just block out their calenders. Yes, they get a certain number of "personal days," but these can't be used as a supplement to a vacation, and you can't take more than one consecutively.
It's amazing how many folks who don't actually know any teachers, think they know all about their days.
In many states, school teachers can get unemployement for the time they do get off in the summer time, so lets not forget that asoect of teachers' perks...I know it was so in NYS in many disctricts!
Not to pooh-pooh your example, but your wife gets two months off in the summer, minus the week she has to attend the class. Leaving aside that your school district seems to go extraordinarily far into the summer (most places end around memorial day), I think you forgot to count the two to three weeks off at Christmas, the week off at Thanksgiving, Spring Break, October break (which most schools get), Columbus Day, MLK Day, etc.
That adds up to three months--at the least.
And so in the summer you wife can spend all day at the golf course, on the tennis court, or at the beach?
Yeah, that's rough.
"Teachers don't get to choose when to take vacations, unlike people in most other professions who, a month or two ahead of time, just block out their calenders. Yes, they get a certain number of "personal days," but these can't be used as a supplement to a vacation, and you can't take more than one consecutively."
We have to pay the sub too if we require one. That's why in 11 years of teaching, I've only had a sub maybe 10 or 11 times--MOST of it being because my mom said I HAD to take the day off to go to a family reunion, a marriage, or a graduation of one of my siblings (with 8 kids, it's hard for our family to be toghether too much). So the "mom" factor for me is the biggest factor in me missing a day. :)