Parents rally to save sixth-grade field trip

TUMWATER – Parents in the Tumwater School District are organizing to try to save the annual sixth-grade trip to the Cispus Learning Center.

With about two weeks before the Tuwmater district is set to vote on its 2009-10 budget, parent Raechel Laneer said she knows that the chance to save the program for Tumwater is short.

District officials say the educational and leadership opportunities of the program, which costs the district $30,000 not including staffing costs, might be provided in a less costly and more effective way than the three-day field trip; but parents say that the trip has been a rite of passage for Tumwater students that would be hard to replace.

Laneer and other parents would like the district to consider allowing the parents to raise the money for the annual springtime trip, similar to an effort by Olympia district parents to save that district’s trip for the 2009-10 school year.

“We understand that they don’t have money to be going to extra programs,” Laneer said. “But we think it’s valuable enough to find alternative funding, to keep it going until they maybe they can reinstate it back into their programs.”

As of Sunday, 225 people have joined the Facebook cause “Save Cispus for Thurston County Kids” that Laneer founded in support of the Tumwater Cispus trip.

The Olympia School District this year decided to cut the district funding to the annual fifth-grade trip to the Cispus Learning Center in Randle. However, Olympia officials maintained the district’s springtime reservation at the campsite, to allow parents raise an estimated $70,000, which is a little less than half of the total cost of the trip. The rest comes from the fee of $150 per student, which families pay.

Tumwater parents say they want the same chance.

The trip is an opportunity for students to experience environmental education in the outdoors, and to bond with their future middle-school classmates, parent Gigi Duff said.

“This is their first middle school experience,” Duff said. “It makes their transition to middle school so much easier.”

That kind of team-building is “not going to happen at an assembly. That bonding won’t happen in a classroom or in an after-school function,” Duff said.

“In our cause, we are not asking the school board to make trade offs within the existing budget,” parent Chris Peters said.

“This is a program that’s been in place for 28 years. It has delivered a tremendous value over that time as an educational element within the Tumwater School District as well as Olympia and other districts in the area. While they are removing it, if it’s for budgetary reasons, let’s give the opportunity for the parents and the community to help out. If it’s for another reason, because they think they can replace this with something else, I think we’d be having a different conversation. I don’t think you can replace the value of this with a kit in the classroom. It goes beyond that from a value perspective.

“We’re asking for an opportunity to understand and for them to engage with the community on this one,” he said.

Tumwater’s program cost $50,000 last year, and the district’s general fund covered about $30,000 of it. A fee of $53 per student covered the rest. But district officials say cost is not the only concern.

Allen Jones, director of financial resources and support services, said until Duff addressed the school board after the budget public hearing July 23, parents hadn’t objected to the district’s proposal to cut the program. The district plans to pass the budget at its Aug. 27 meeting to meet a state deadline to pass the budget at the end of the month, but he said that the community may still address the district on the matter.

“We welcome all parent and community input,” Jones said. “If we do eliminate Cispus as we are planning to do, we are planning to study ways to meet that need in other ways. It does fill a need; we recognize that it does have value. It’s a question of whether we can meet those needs in a better way.”

Suzanne Hall, Tumwater Executive Director of Student Learning, said that the district is looking at ways to enhance its environmental education throughout the elementary grades, which the Cispus program doesn’t provide.

“When we talked to teachers, they would really like to have more opportunities to build an outdoor education program closer to home and for students K through six,” she said.

Another concern was the ability for parents to afford the fee and associated costs for the field trip.

She said that the district is looking into other types of middle school transition programs for the sixth graders, to encourage the bonding and other social benefits that the overnight field trip has.

“We were thinking it could be a picnic, or a campfire night,” she said.

Hall said the program also costs staff time in terms of paperwork and trip organization, which have been increasing over the life of the program.

“There’s more accountability now than there was years ago when the program started,” Hall said.