Expensive Field Trips- Montgomery

[Anonymous]

Wow, Woodlin sounds quite fancy. Is that a W school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 5th grader had a trip to the Air & Space Museum yesterday. Cost $15, school buses, back at school for a late lunch. Said they saw a total of one exhibit, a 3D movie, and got lost because it was so crowded with tourists that the small group got separated from their class.

Seriously—why on earth would anyone plan a Smithsonian field trip in the middle of tourist season? With a late-start elementary school, it's bad enough getting down there and back in time for the afternoon bus routes, never mind fighting traffic and crowds. (We're downcounty, so I can't imagine how upcounty schools could do it.) I guess as long as they're missing class, the kids don't care, but it seems like a waste of time, and stressful for teachers, I'm sure.

It sounds like they didn't have enough parent volunteers or school refused them which is a bad idea in that situation. If they were with a parent, the parent may have paid for a movie. We've paid for extra stuff for the group of kids we've had.

They were school buses, and the $15 went in part toward the movie, which they all went to. The issue was really the timing, and the crowds. Realistically, there was no way they could have done enough at the museum in that time frame to make it worthwhile. Not sure how many parent volunteers they had, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is in kindergarten. We are in W cluster. Do the W schools go on better or more field trips? Sounds like it from this thread.

We're at a Silver Spring FOCUS ES and our field trips are okay, though talking to my friends in Potomac, they do seem to get some pretty awesome ones! Like one of theirs was a field trip to the Kennedy Center with a meal prepared by the Kennedy Center chef or something crazy.

In 2nd grade, ALL the schools go to Strathmore.

I've been hearing about this Kennedy Center + meal thing for so long that I'm starting to think it is an urban legend. Either that or one school with an amazing "in."

[Anonymous]

Has a teacher ever asked for a check to be written to him or herself? Is that odd?

[Anonymous]

Churchill coaches asked to be paid in cash or make checks payable to them when there were trip costs. It just seemed to be the way things were done in the Athletic Department.