By Kyra Williams
News Editor
The Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees discussed its proposal to shorten extracurricular school-sponsored trips on April 18. Although students may be absent for an extended amount of time, these trips allow students to apply skills they learn in the classroom in a real world setting, as well as bond with their peers and teachers.
The MBUSD Board of Trustees proposed steps extracurricular organizations must take prior to going on the trips. These include requiring overnight schoolsponsored trips to be approved at least 30 days before the trip. Exceptions would include unforseen required trips such as California Interscholastic Federation State Finals. Students would not be permitted to miss more than nine days of school per year for overnight field trips, and no trips would take place during semester finals. The school board is also considering shortening school trips, eliminating allocating the current days for travelling and outside activities unrelated to the purpose of the trip. This would ultimately lead to shorter trips that will not give students as many opportunities as they could originally receive.
The recommendation from the board that students shall not miss more than nine days of school is unfair to students who are involved in multiple extracurricular activities and sports and, therefore, have the opportunity to go on several trips throughout the year. These students should be able to go on trips with each organization they belong to, but the nine day maximum may restrain them from these memorable opportunities.
According to an article in The Annals of General Psychiatry by Jo Magne Ingul, although missing a respectable amount of school can lead to an increase in student stress, at least some part of the responsibility in missing school should fall on the students’ judgement of what they can handle. If students believe that they can miss more than nine days of school for trips and maintain their schoolwork, it should be their decision to miss school. High school students between 14 and 18 years old are responsible enough to make their own decisions on what they can and cannot handle. Students are taught to be advocates for themselves and to be accountable for their own actions, and these proposed rules would deter them from doing so.
Additional days added to trips allow time for students to work and prepare for conferences without distractions such as sports, other homework and social commitments, Model United Nations student and junior Lauren Goldston said. Extra days also allow for team bonding and the experience to learn outside of the classroom by visiting historical sites and museums. These trips allow for students to be exposed to many different opportunities, such as visiting prospective colleges or hearing mebers of Congress speak. It is evident that these trips are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for students to visit places to which they may never again travel. For example, travelling internationally for the opportunity to attend and compete at conferences.
If these school trips are shortened, students may miss out on opportunities that they have to decline if they have already missed nine or more days of school due to school-sponsored trips.
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