BHUSD Agrees to Subsidize Outdoor Education Trips

Middle school outdoor education field trips will continue—at least for now—thanks to new funding from the Beverly Hills Unified School District.

The Board of Education on Tuesday agreed to provide $50,000 for necessary deposits for middle school field trips at the four K-8 schools. The trips, a decades-old tradition for Beverly Hills students, were in jeopardy because some schools were having trouble raising funds from parents to cover the costs.

“Several of our schools are at risk of not being able to operate these trips,” Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Alex Cherniss told the board, noting that the trips collectively cost about $400,000 a year. Cherniss and other staff suggested the board allocate $52,000 to pay for the trips' needed buses.

BHUSD sixth-graders typically take a three-day camping trip to Malibu or Idyllwild, seventh-graders take a three-day trip to either El Capitan State Beach or the Catalina Island Marine Institute while eighth-graders take a five-day excursion to Yosemite National Park.

Principal Steve Kessler, who represented the BHUSD principals in the discussion, said the Yosemite trips were the most expensive, costing about $625 per student. In the last year, some students’ families had said they could not afford the costs. Because a deposit had been paid at the beginning of the school year, the Horace Mann PTA ended up spending $14,000 in scholarship money and other funds to subsidize those students, Kessler said.

The schools must put down a deposit—typically 5 percent of the cost of the trip—six or more months ahead of time to guarantee their time slot. Many other school districts are vying for slots at these locations, which offer itineraries that complement the state outdoor education curriculum for middle school.

“Is this board prepared to say we are a unified school district?” board Vice President Brian Goldberg said. “If one school cancels the outdoor education trip it isn’t fair to other students.” 

Although the board members agreed that each school should offer the same field trips to its students, they differed on which trips to subsidize and what was the best method of doing so.

“I’m nervous about picking one trip over the other to subsidize,” member Jake Manaster said. 

Board President Lisa Korbatov said that “there is a great disparity in the amount of money the different PTAs raise each year” to possibly subsidize the trips.

The board adopted an amendment offered by member Steven Fenton to use the money suggested to pay for buses to instead pay for the necessary upfront deposits. The money, which the board rounded down to $50,000, would be used at the “discretion of the district office,” he said, with the goal of getting the schools to repay some or all of the funds by the end of the school year. 

The money will come from unrestricted funds in the BHUSD’s general budget, Cherniss said.

The dilemma of paying for school trips will become more acute across the state if AB 165, the Constitutional Free Public Education Guarantee bill, is signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The legislation explicitly states that student fees, such as those imposed to purchase textbooks or go on class trips, violate the California Constitution, which guarantees a free public education.

Educators say it is likely that Brown will sign the bill by the end of the year.

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