School Board focuses on field trips

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Rising fuel costs have forced the Wythe County school system to develop exacting guidelines regulating the number and nature of field trips for each school.
The updated guidelines set to be implemented for the 2008-09 school year were presented to the School Board during its meeting Thursday morning.
Superintendent Albert Armentrout said the formally codified rules are needed “basically to limit fuel and gasoline consumption.”
“There are lots of wonderful trips out there and you have to pick and choose,” Armentrout said. “The idea was to have consistency among schools.”
After Thursday’s meeting, LaDonna Meade, director of instruction, said the new written regulations don’t substantially differ from the general guidelines the school system followed in the past.
“It’s really not any major changes,” she said, adding that having formal rules will help focus trips on educational benefits for participating students.
Meade helped lead a committee of central office staff, principals, assistant principals and teachers who met during the last few weeks to create the field trip standards.
The guidelines break down into different categories, one for elementary and middle schools and one for high schools.
Each elementary and middle school in the county will be allowed to take four “reward/motivational” trips during a school year. Spiller Elementary School, because of a larger enrollment, is the only exception and will be allowed six trips.
Only one trip can be taken out of the county and it must be to a destination within a 100-mile radius that will allow the students to return home before the end of the school day – essentially meaning no overnight excursions.
“We’re looking at the reward trips as being closer to home,” Meade said.
In addition, each grade level, pre-K through eighth-grade, will be allowed to take two educational/instructional field trips. Again only one of those two trips can be outside of the county and it must not extend past regular school hours or be more than 100 miles away.
Traditional overnight trips to Williamsburg for the elementary schools and Washington, D.C., for the middle schools, however, will be automatically-approved exceptions and will for the foreseeable future continue as usual.
“We’re looking at educational trips for the value of where they’re going,” Meade told the School Board members in explaining why trips to Williamsburg and Washington, D.C., still will be allowed, while outings to certain closer destinations, for example the aquarium in Gatlinburg, Tenn., will be nixed.
Each high school, on the other hand, will be allowed a total of eight field trips – all of which must be of an educational nature.
Principals will be responsible for allocating the trips, which can’t be overnight stays.
Exceptions that will not count toward the eight trips include athletic events and other competitions such as music festivals.
Field trips “directly related to the educational future of students” also will not count toward each school’s allotment. Examples cited in the guidelines include trips to the governor’s school and the vocational school for eligible sophomores.
Trips such as band performances at Walt Disney World, though, will be restricted, Meade said.
“Trips to malls, retail stores, amusement parks [and] eateries will no longer be allowed,” the regulations state. “If any of those trips are educational/instructional, then they will have to be approved by the school principal and will be deducted from the school’s allotment. These trips must be taken within the school day.”
Considering the price of fuel, Armentrout said the school system simply can’t afford non-essential field trips, adding that school officials felt compelled “to eliminate recreation” and to require that trips directly support Standards of Learning tasks.
Also at Thursday’s meeting, the School Board decided to shift its next set of 12 monthly meetings to Wednesdays, generally on the second Wednesday of each month.
Under the new schedule, the governing body’s next regular monthly meeting will be at 9 a.m. on Aug. 13.
The School Board also named Walter White and Chalmer Frye as School Board chairman and vice chairman, respectively, for the 2008-09 school year, maintaining the group’s recent leadership arrangement.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .