By Quinn Kropschot
Staff Writer
Mira Costa has award winning Model UN and Choir programs. These programs travel all around the world performing sometimes during school days, causing them to miss school. Though all the students who participate in MUN and Choir work hard, when they miss school they can miss important class time, which may end up hurting their educational process.
Students who are chosen to participate in these trips often miss multiple days of school for a three day performance. The students who go on the trips may have a hard time making up the work and learning the lessons that were taught in class. The students who missed school often have a hard time catching back up in class. This can cause their grades to slip and hurt their overall GPA.
Some teachers at Costa do not support the length of these trips. Students who miss so many days of school are missing the classroom environment and are not able to learn the material to the best of their abilities. On a recent MUN trip to Paris, students participated in a three day conference, though the trip lasted ten days. Two of these days were travel days, and on the remaining five days students toured the city.
These trips are also very expensive for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District. The district has to hire substitute teachers for the extent of time that a teacher is absent from their job. This causes the district to lose money that could be spent on other important programs Mira Costa needs.
Due to the fact that these school sponsored trips cause students to miss excessive amounts of school and cost the district money they should be shortened. Although the trips may be great opportunities for students to experience the world and other cultures, shortening the extracurricular trips to the minimum amount of days needed would increase student performance and the amount of money in the district.
Leave a Reply