Seahawks’ championship parade packed the streets, and Seattle classrooms felt it the next morning

The Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory parade drew such massive crowds that classrooms across the city felt the impact the following morning. As reported by NBC Sports, thousands of students and hundreds of staff members were absent the day after the celebration.

Despite warnings from Seattle Public Schools officials that parade attendance would not qualify as an excused absence, the district recorded 12,697 student absences and 663 staff absences. While officials could not determine how many were directly tied to the parade rather than illness or other factors, a spokesperson said several hundred more staff than usual were out.

Before the event, district leaders announced that students who attended the parade would not receive excused absences. The policy left families to decide between attending the once-in-a-lifetime celebration and maintaining attendance records.

The celebration’s impact stretched beyond the parade route

Other cities have handled similar situations differently. Philadelphia closed its schools for its Super Bowl celebration last year, and Kansas City did the same two years earlier, opting to align school schedules with citywide festivities. The San Francisco teachers’ strike also left tens of thousands of students out of classrooms this week.

Seattle Superintendent Ben Shuldiner acknowledged that some families chose to attend the parade while reiterating the district’s focus on classroom instruction. “Did some families take their kids to march? Absolutely,” Shuldiner said, adding that families wanted to watch the Seattle Seahawks celebrate a championship.

He emphasized that the district’s responsibility remains centered on students’ education. “We put our 50,000 kids front and center. . . . They deserve to have school, our families deserve to have their kids in school,” Shuldiner said. Separately, live translation of T-Mobile calls entered beta testing this week.

The absence figures underscore how widely the celebration resonated across the city. With 12,697 students out, entire classrooms were likely affected as families opted to participate in the historic event.