The WW-P school administration will look into the rising costs of overnight field trips and will make recommendations to the school board after officials finish reviewing their options throughout the summer.##M:[more]##
According to Steven Mayer, the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, the administration will try to get a big picture sense of why students take trips and whether there are good reasons for them, and also how much of a financial burden the district is placing on families if their students are involved in many activities.
While Mayer says the recommendations are not likely to come in the form of a formal policy, “we’ll be working on it in committee structure through the summer and hopefully have recommendations” that teachers and administrators would follow.
And because there are a variety of different clubs and activities that take students on overnight trips, including some to other countries, Mayer says the different activities would have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. “It’s really trying to be sure we have a clear picture of the essentials that honor who we want to be as a district.”
Possibilities include cutting down on the number of trips. The topic has come up during recent school board meetings during board approval of overnight field trips for groups at the high schools.
Board members said they were thinking about the possibility of moving to a three-year cycle, where students participating in certain activities be offered the opportunity once every three years, as opposed to every year. The only roadblock they would encounter with implementing the three-year cycle, especially for activities in which students might not be eligible for taking trips until they reach a certain level, is that some students might miss out on the opportunities entirely during their time in high school.
“This is just something that’s in the beginning stages of discussion,” Mayer says. “We will certainly make an attempt at including parents’ and students’ voices and teachers in the whole process.”
