NORTHAMPTON — It will be until at least May before the School Committee moves closer to answering questions raised about student-funded, overseas field trips at Northampton High School, and whether they’re accessible to all families.
The issue was brought up at the committee’s March 9 meeting when discussing approval for a 10-day, 16-student field trip to Guatemala in February of 2018 that will cost $2,425, excluding airfare that is estimated to be an additional $500 to $700. The School Committee unanimously approved the trip, but its Rules & Policy Subcommittee will now look into the district’s policies on field trips when it meets on May 4.
Under discussion are several policies, and particularly the wording of one rule:
“Teachers and other school staff are prohibited from soliciting privately run trips through the school system. The trip approval process applies only to school sanctioned trips; the School Committee does not approve trips that are privately organized and run without school sanctioning.”
Committee member Nathaniel Reade took issue with the phrase “privately run trips,” given that trips have often been organized through private entities. The trip to Guatemala is being run through Peace Works Travel, which is a benefit corporation — a for-profit company that also includes creating general public benefit as part of its mission.
The subcommittee will now review what exactly the field trip policy in question was intended to mean. In addition, the subcommittee will also review how the trips relate to district rules about the “distribution of non-school literature.”
The question of affordability was also originally raised by Reade, who at the March 9 meeting said that people had come to him with concerns that the trips were financially out of reach for some.
“We’ve got a high school where most kids can not afford to go on a $3,900 trip to Italy or a $2,500 trip to Guatemala, so people are concerned about that,” Reade said.
But when reached by telephone to further discuss those concerns, Reade declined to comment. Laura Fallon, the chair of the Rules & Policy Subcommittee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the May 4 meeting.
“Every single person on this committee is just thinking about the schools and our kids,” School Committee member Molly Burnham told the Gazette. “I think that our teachers care passionately about all of our kids, too.”
Burnham wasn’t present at the March 9 meeting when the field trips were discussed, so she didn’t offer any specifics about the field trips. But she did recognize the issue as meriting discussion.
“It’s important, especially in this day and age, that we raise questions and have discourse,” Burnham said.
Social studies teacher and department chair Kate Todhunter has previously put together overseas field trips, and because she is organizing next year’s Guatemala trip, she attended the March 9 committee meeting. Todhunter told the Gazette that her comments at the meeting were the only ones she wished to provide.
During that meeting, Todhunter and Northampton High School Principal Bryan Lombardi stressed that the trips are not comprised of only wealthy students, and that some worked after-school jobs to participate.
“They are a diverse group of kids who work very hard to make an incredible experience real,” Todhunter said.
Todhunter also criticized the committee for raising questions of equity when, she said, they themselves provided inadequate funding.
“I can not promise you that I will hold enough bake sales or car washes to raise thousands of dollars so that every kid who wants to go can,” she said. “Just like the city of Northampton can not produce the thousands of dollars it takes to level fund our excellent public schools.”
Todhunter’s are not the only overseas trips. School Committee records show that in recent years, Northampton teachers have proposed trips to everywhere from Spain to Costa Rica.
And Northampton students don’t appear to be the only local public school students that go on overseas field trips.
Northampton Public Schools Superintendent John Provost said that since the School Committee discussed international travel, he has begun preliminary research by contacting other local superintendents. He said international field trips appear to be commonplace, as does the practice of using a private entity to help organize them.
“The use of travel companies in the research I’ve done so far seems to be a very common practice,” Provost said.
At the March 9 meeting, some committee members suggested that without going through a known travel company, it may be difficult to assuage the safety concerns that with international travel.
The educational value of those trips, however, is not at all in question. School Committee members spoke highly of Todhunter’s trips, which have included one excursion to Cambodia for students in her History of the Holocaust and Modern Genocide class “to visit a region affected by genocide,” according to the field trip request form.
“I really just think it’s the cost factor for going abroad for up to a week that has caused the issue of international field trips to be looked at slightly differently,” Provost said.
School Committee member Howard Moore said that while the costs of field trips are getting scrutiny, the issue would ultimately come down to deciding what current policies mean, how words like “affordable” are defined and whether existing policies should be changed to reflect what the School Committee actually wants for local students.
“I don’t think it’s a polarized sort of discussion, actually,” Moore told the Gazette. “I think it’s about figuring out how to achieve what everyone wants.”
For Moore, it’s academic enrichment for all students.
Complicating the issue, he added, is that the committee likely won’t have the money to fund scholarships for students wanting to go abroad.
Previous trips have offered some monetary assistance. At the School Committee meeting, Todhunter said a $2,000 scholarship was offered for her trip to Cambodia. That trip, which was organized through Friendship Tours World Travel, cost $2,395 plus airfare.
One suggestion floated at the committee’s March 9 meeting is for the trips to be moved outside of the framework of the school, however it would not ameliorate concerns about money.
And as that question of affordability lingers, committee member Thomas Baird said at that meeting that it could raise larger issues at Northampton’s schools. “As we explore this idea of equity, it may be bigger than just the field trips,” he said.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.