After cuts to WA outdoor education, parents try to save class trips

Echoing throughout a forested Bainbridge Island campus are the typical chirps and chitters of woodland fauna, punctuated by another sound: squeals of delight from fifth graders.

The students discover a new animal, which silently slinks back to its home in the pond. A plant previously only seen in textbooks sparks awe. A glimpse of a refurbished fire lookout tower - stairs leading about 120 feet into the air, above the tree canopy - sets off excited, nervous chatter.

These fifth graders from Dunlap Elementary School are participating in a time-honored tradition for Washington elementary students: an overnight field trip to an outdoor education facility to soak up the state's storied natural wonders.

During these trips, students learn about the environment as they hike through forested trails, harvest fresh produce and examine marine life, sometimes for the first time.

At IslandWood, an environmental education nonprofit that hosts class trips and overnight camps on Bainbridge Island, about 10 Dunlap students trudge up trail paths, muddying their kid-sized hiking boots as they giggle to themselves. Several wear colorful rain jackets and hiking pants, knees covered in dirt.

One student bursts into a run ahead of the group to point out several trees the class learned about earlier in the day: western red cedars, big leaf maples and western hemlocks.

"Another one right there!" shouts fifth-grader Zahra Latifi. "And there! And there!"

Students at Dunlap and others across the state look forward to trips like these. But the outings have become much more expensive for schools this year after state lawmakers zeroed out a key funding source: the Outdoor Learning Grant Program.

The state grant, established by the Legislature in 2022, helped schools afford to send fifth- and sixth-graders to outdoor education programs. Some schools send students to centers similar to IslandWood; others take their students on overnight camping trips. Outdoor education providers were also eligible to receive grant funding to help subsidize their services.

But last year, lawmakers eliminated the program's biennial budget of $40 million, citing the state's multibillion-dollar budget deficit. The cuts went into effect after Gov. Bob Ferguson signed the budget into law last May.

Schools are now hunting for alternative funding sources, shortening the trips or canceling them altogether.

"I'm a firm believer that this is not about just a nice field trip," said Megan Karch, IslandWood's CEO. "It's a critical part of our kids' education. Our kids need authentic connection more than ever, and coming to our programs, that's one of the No. 1 things that it provides."

About 750 schools used the grant funds to subsidize trips for 53,000 students during the 2024-25 school year, according to data from Outdoor Schools Washington, a nonprofit that helped administer the grant and is now connecting schools with potential new funding. Before the state funding was cut, nearly 800 schools and 66,000 students had been projected to use state grant money during the current school year.

New costs stun schools, families

The uncertainty around grant funding was an "emotional roller coaster" for the fifth graders at Fairmount Park Elementary, said parent Lauren Brohawn.

Fairmount Park's fifth graders have visited IslandWood for nearly a decade, Brohawn said. But because of the loss of grant funding, the trip's cost for parents had doubled. Several Fairmount Park parents could not afford the increased cost, she said, and the trip was at risk of being canceled.

"The students were devastated," said Brohawn, who helped fellow parents fundraise.

To make up the difference, the school, alongside parents and IslandWood, started a fundraising campaign to pay for the already-scheduled trip. The school also pushed its visit back from November to January to have more time to raise the funds.

All Washington public schools were eligible for the grant funding, said Greg Barker, the managing director of the Washington School Principals' Education Foundation, which oversees Outdoor Schools Washington.

The grant program prioritized schools with greater numbers of low-income students, students of color and rural students, among other factors.

After losing the grant funding, some schools have shortened scheduled trips to one or two days, or from overnight trips to daytime-only. Others pulled funding from other projects, Barker said, or changed destinations. A few schools plan to go on the scheduled trips, but create their own curriculum instead of working with the provider's staff.

The most unlucky schools were those that had trips scheduled for late summer or early fall, Barker said, just months after lawmakers cut funding for the grant program. Those schools had "really had no time at all to pivot to get funding," he said, after Ferguson signed off on the budget at the end of the 2025 legislative session.

"It was especially problematic because we couldn't tell schools until May there was no funding," Barker said.

Fairmount Park's fundraiser collected about $5,400 but missed its goal of $20,500, which would have covered the full cost for every student to attend IslandWood.

But the school's trip did continue as planned. Some families received full or partial scholarships depending on their financial needs, Brohawn said, while others paid a slightly increased cost of about $540.

IslandWood enters budget deficit

IslandWood CEO Karch said the grant cuts have hurt many of the nonprofit's programs, especially its overnight camp and teacher professional development programs.

About 4,500 students visit IslandWood for overnight trips each school year. But this year, Karch expects attendance to drop by 1,000 students.

Despite the lack of state funding, outdoor education providers like IslandWood are still working to regain participation levels after the COVID-19 pandemic forced most students into remote learning starting in 2020, Barker said.

In lieu of the grant, IslandWood has set out to raise more than $2.5 million annually to fund scholarships for students to attend overnight camps, which are supported by students' tuition. The fundraising push aims to collect $8 million over the next three years, Karch said, starting this year.

IslandWood's board has approved a plan to run a budget deficit this year "to make sure that we don't turn any kid down or any school down," Karch said.

"Our board was bold," Karch said. "What happened was we were listening and hearing of either organizations closing their programs or pulling back, and we felt strongly we could not do that this year."

In 2025, IslandWood scholarships - which are funded by private donors and foundations - provided about $1.9 million to students for overnight trips, Karch said.

Because IslandWood's overnight school trips need to be planned a year in advance, Karch said, the nonprofit is looking to raise funds now to support future trips. Karch does not expect the grant funding to be restored in 2027.

"You can't wait until the end of the year to tell a school whether you have funding for them or not," Karch said.

In a separate effort, the nonprofit also helped about 10 schools - including Fairmount Park - individually fundraise to make up the state funding gap so they could afford to attend.

IslandWood charges $460 for each student attending the nonprofit's overnight program, which hosts schools for four days and three nights. Tuition includes lodging, food, instructors and more.

Fundraising for ‘a rite of passage'

Highland Park Elementary School in West Seattle lost Outdoor Learning Grant funding this school year, but had already planned for its fifth graders to attend Camp Sealth on Vashon Island.

Cara Iverson, a parent of a fifth-grader at Highland Park, said the school's annual trip is "a rite of passage into middle school." Iverson said she and other parents had the "pretty daunting" goal of raising $15,000 to make up for the lost grant.

To fundraise, parents asked for donations directly and sold popcorn, eliciting an "overwhelming" and "very heartwarming" response, Iverson said.

In about two months, the fundraiser collected more than $20,000. If they hadn't raised enough money, Iverson said that several parents would not have been able to afford the trip, putting it at risk of being canceled.

"Not only do we want every single kid to have the chance to have this experience, but we definitely didn't want someone to not go just because they don't have the right supplies to make the trip a success," Iverson said.

Barker said the Washington School Principals' Education Foundation and other advocates for outdoor education have talked to lawmakers about the impact of the funding cut, to "very supportive" responses. The groups plan to push for restoring state funding during the next legislative session, which begins in January 2027.

"We have many, many legislators who are still very supportive of outdoor education," Barker said. "They believe in it for the same reasons of mental health and the social-emotional learning, all of those things - but there's no money."

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