Chaperone turned school trip into family vacation

[Anonymous]

This trip is confusing. Is there more context OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think this is terribly unreasonable... until the babysitter part.

That is, I don't think it's a problem for a school chaperone to bring his/her family on the trip -- especially if his daughter was one of the students. Would you have been allowed to go on the trip if you wanted to? If so, this isn't different. Was he paid substantially extra for his time? If not, then I think it's nice he served as a chaperone at all.

Also, as the adult, whether or not his/her family was there, he was going to get to dictate what they did in any case. Like, if his family wasn't there and he said "no I'm not taking you to X Y Z movie" and/or "we have to be back at the hotel by 8 pm," would that have struck you as unreasonable... or was it just his motive?

All that said, if they actually had to babysit the younger kids at some point... That would be out of line. If you just mean that they were limited in what they could do because of the young children... then I think no big deal.

Fair enough. I think it was also a situation where the students weren't allowed to do things they wanted to do (i.e. rides, etc) because the chaperone prioritized the younger children's preferences.

Or did she just use the younger kids as an excuse? If both parents were there, this doesn't even make sense, since they could have split up. You need to talk to the other girl's mom and the chaperone.

OP here. Yes, exactly. The parents could have split up and one could have taken the teens to do what they wanted to do. But the parents kept the entire family together as a large unit and the two non-family members (students) were forced to tag along and do what the family wanted to do, including rides, etc. that appealed to much younger children. I told DD she should have tried to get reassigned to a different chaperone on at least one of the days, but I don't think she really knew who to ask to make that happen.

And yes, official school-sponsored trip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm 16:14 here again. I see that you posted "parent chaperone" if that was you earlier, OP. How is this a school trip if there was a parent chaperone only and no teacher or other school representative? I still think the arrangement itself sounds odd for a "school trip." Can you fill us in?

There were school officials there as well, but many groupings of kids had parent chaperones. It was an official school-sponsored trip with a year of fundraising, meetings in the school, permission slips and medical forms that had to be filled out, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't sound like a school field trip at all frankly. Sounds like a family vacation and two school friends got to go along.

100+ students from the school went on the trip. It was an official trip. Think a drama club performing at a theater festival in California, a football team playing in Hawaii, a band playing in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. That sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What can the school do? “Fire” the parent? Just tell the school so they know for the future.

OP. This is my question. What can I ask for?

I think I'm going to ask that chaperones not be allowed to bring their entire families. Which is not the same thing as entire families cannot go on the trip, just that they should not be chaperoning kids who are not their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't sound like a school field trip at all frankly. Sounds like a family vacation and two school friends got to go along.

100+ students from the school went on the trip. It was an official trip. Think a drama club performing at a theater festival in California, a football team playing in Hawaii, a band playing in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. That sort of thing.

This information would have been helpful up front.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My money is on the two girls being really, really disappointed that instead of this feeling like a special, adult trip, it felt like they were just children in this family, not that anything truly inappropriate happened.

Yup.

Either way, they should not be babysitting this woman's kids.

My guess is that what they describe as "babysitting" was being forced to take the kids on rides with them, or talk to them at mealtimes, and not being allowed to have alone time as older girls. I would be very surprised if someone actually left them alone with the younger kids, but OP needs to clarify.

If this is a trip that required that one of the parent's chaperone to make it happen, maybe this is the only parent who stepped up. Did they also drive?

[Anonymous]

OP, is there going to be another trip next year? In the future, your daughter needs to be proactive in forming a group with a chaperone who is on the same page as she is. Some parents probably would have preferred their kids be with a less-permissive chaperone. If there were 100+ students, then they needed so many chaperones that maybe the only way to find enough is to allow people to make it a vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My money is on the two girls being really, really disappointed that instead of this feeling like a special, adult trip, it felt like they were just children in this family, not that anything truly inappropriate happened.

Yup.

Either way, they should not be babysitting this woman's kids.

My guess is that what they describe as "babysitting" was being forced to take the kids on rides with them, or talk to them at mealtimes, and not being allowed to have alone time as older girls. I would be very surprised if someone actually left them alone with the younger kids, but OP needs to clarify.

If this is a trip that required that one of the parent's chaperone to make it happen, maybe this is the only parent who stepped up. Did they also drive?

No, there were two plane loads of people. And multiple groups with multiple chaperones.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like Disney and the older girls wanted to walk around alone.

[Anonymous]

The additional context is helpful because it completely changes the scenario.

I agree with the ^PP that the girls wanted to walk around and are unhappy that they couldn't. It certainly doesn't sound like they were "babysitting" at all because they weren't forced to care for the children alone (sitting next to a child on a ride is NOT babysitting).

I think the girls should have found a school official and asked for a different chaperone. Lesson learned.

[Anonymous]

Were they able to hang out with their own peer group doing things more typical of their age group, or did they need to hang around doing things only younger siblings could do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What can the school do? “Fire” the parent? Just tell the school so they know for the future.

OP. This is my question. What can I ask for?

I think I'm going to ask that chaperones not be allowed to bring their entire families. Which is not the same thing as entire families cannot go on the trip, just that they should not be chaperoning kids who are not their own.

I'd be very surprised if any school district actually OKs a scenario where the parent chaperones bring spouses and younger children. Our MCPS school has overnight trips with parent chaperones, and you are not permitted to bring younger children or go as a family. The point of chaperoning is to supervise the participants. You can't do that if you're managing your younger kids.

[Anonymous]

I was a chaperone for an overseas trip and no way would our school have allowed this. They had very strict rules and our own kids weren't even allowed to be in my small group of kids that I looked after for the week.

I'm pretty laid back about most things, but this seems like a violation of the very intent of a trip like this. I'm sure there are some lessons for your DD to learn from this, but that is really rotten that she was really looking forward to this, had helped raise money and then it turned out to be a tag-along type situation with another family.

The school *really* needs to to put some guidelines in place to make sure this doesn't happen again, but I don't see anything that will "fix" it for your DD other than think about how she might have raised this as an issue sooner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think this is terribly unreasonable... until the babysitter part.

That is, I don't think it's a problem for a school chaperone to bring his/her family on the trip -- especially if his daughter was one of the students. Would you have been allowed to go on the trip if you wanted to? If so, this isn't different. Was he paid substantially extra for his time? If not, then I think it's nice he served as a chaperone at all.

Also, as the adult, whether or not his/her family was there, he was going to get to dictate what they did in any case. Like, if his family wasn't there and he said "no I'm not taking you to X Y Z movie" and/or "we have to be back at the hotel by 8 pm," would that have struck you as unreasonable... or was it just his motive?

All that said, if they actually had to babysit the younger kids at some point... That would be out of line. If you just mean that they were limited in what they could do because of the young children... then I think no big deal.

Fair enough. I think it was also a situation where the students weren't allowed to do things they wanted to do (i.e. rides, etc) because the chaperone prioritized the younger children's preferences.

Or did she just use the younger kids as an excuse? If both parents were there, this doesn't even make sense, since they could have split up. You need to talk to the other girl's mom and the chaperone.

OP here. Yes, exactly. The parents could have split up and one could have taken the teens to do what they wanted to do. But the parents kept the entire family together as a large unit and the two non-family members (students) were forced to tag along and do what the family wanted to do, including rides, etc. that appealed to much younger children. I told DD she should have tried to get reassigned to a different chaperone on at least one of the days, but I don't think she really knew who to ask to make that happen.

And yes, official school-sponsored trip.

So, by "baby-sitting," do you mean that the two non-family teenagers were left ALONE AND IN CHARGE of younger kids, or just that all their vacationing was done in the presence of younger kids, along with the parents?