I hear you about the summer/vacation work- it is beyond tedious, and frustrating. Here health is just about the only requirement that can be taken during the summer, and most kids we know do this to allow room for AP or elective classes during the year. However, our health class requires brick and mortar attendance, and because it is a full semester class, students are not allowed to miss even one of the summer classes.
Yes well our school district claims to require the same thing for health. They now have a similar attend once a week but otherwise online health course. But this requires you must be HERE for the 6 weeks of summer school. Seems you have to ask for special permission to take the online BYU online class. Honestly I would LOVE for him to take the B&M class. In our district it's a well done informative class even if it's an easy A and they bring in a ton of guest speakers.
Don't get me started on summer AP work- kids here really have to push to complete all the AP stuff before the May exam time, and then have 6 weeks of school left after the exam, which is generally spent on lame activities like review for regents and SAT2 exams- maddening as these exams are of much lower rigor. The summer work is excruciating- last year, DD had a LOT of work (much of it busy work in her opinion) for her world history class, only to arrive the first day of school and learn that the teacher was not even going to look at the vast majority of it; too many students to evaluate all those essays and short answer questions. Not a good system. But fitting it in zero period his last semester wasn't a good option for DS.
Up to two years ago we also had 6 weeks plus weeks after AP's. But the district changed it's schedule partly to get a few more weeks of school in before AP's. This year there was only around a month of school after AP's were done. Still his AP classes were essentially done after their AP class was over. Still the class DS has the most homework for will be AP Physics, and they are trying to fit in the entirely of Physics 1 & Physics 2 in one year.
