One is how much the absence is going to impact your child's progress. If they are already struggling, I wouldn't take them out. If they are breezing through everything, then it's probably no harm. And of course the older they are, the more acute the impact of the absence becomes. For us it was no big deal through elementary school, but a few days becomes much harder to recover from in middle school and into high school, so we're less likely to do it now.

That aside, the second issue is how much grief you're going to get - and are willing to take - from your school and/or school district. Miss a few days and it's probably not a big deal. Miss a lot and you can expect to start getting emails and letters. This is also where your involvement with the school, teachers, principal, etc. come into play. If they know you're involved and your student is doing well, you're probably more likely to get some slack. If they've never seen or heard from you, they're probably wondering if there's something else driving the absences that they should be worried about.

We received one such email this past year, advising that further absences could impact our son's eligibility for the 5th grade trip (which we had already paid for). We contacted the principal and learned that it was a form letter, and in our case, we didn't need to worry about it.