Kennett High School faces an attendance problem with a portion of its Mexican student population. These students vacation for a period of time beyond the winter break established by the district's school calendar. A practice was implemented when staff members noticed that students "disappeared" mostly in December and January. This project took a quantitative approach to explore the effects of the vacations on attendance, GPA, and state scores and found that the vacations had a negative effect on all three aspects. A qualitative approach was also used to ascertain student, parent, teacher and administrative perspectives and recommendations to the vacation issue. This information was gathered to build a knowledge base in order to make an informed recommendation for policy change. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]