In light of approval of cheerleader trip to Hawaii, boardmembers
plan to revisit GUSD policy
Gilroy – What exactly constitutes as an excessive loss of classroom time?
In light of the recent cheerleading controversy, this is the question some Gilroy Unified School District board members want explicitly defined in its field trip policy, a policy that many have criticized for its ambiguity.
Yet, Trustees Pat Midtgaard, Tom Bundros and Rhoda Bress, have expressed their support for the policy as is because it allows for wiggle room, a necessity in a district that oversees students in grades kindergarten through 12 and deals with a variety of field trip requests.
“I personally do, because I want to see a definition (of) what excessive means,” said Boardmember Javier Aguirre when asked if he wants to revisit Board Policy 6153 which strove to limit the number of field trips taken that interrupt the school day.
The debate over policy places the board at odds once again.
After the board cast its final vote on the Gilroy High School cheerleading field trip – it was approved in a 4-3 vote on Wednesday evening in front of a room packed with nearly 100 locals – a discussion about the contentious policy was brought to the table.
Aguirre, Jaime Rosso, Jim Rogers and David McRae all cast their votes in favor of the cheerleading trip, which entails missing three days of school to practice for a Saturday performance at the National Football League Pro Bowl. Now that the trip was approved the teens will be able to travel to Honolulu in February.
The first appeal by the varsity cheerleaders was rejected in a 5-2 vote by the board. Rosso and Aguirre both had a change of heart and ended up voting in the cheerleaders’ favor Wednesday night.
The trustees who approved of the tropical trip pointed out that equity is a major concern, considering the board allowed the Future Farmers of America to attend a six-day field trip and the band and choir often miss school days to perform or participate in competitions.
The FFA trip, approved in August of 2005, was controversial when it was approved. The trip approval was made only two months after the board passed its field trip policy. Trustees Bress and Bundros were the only members to vote against it.
Midtgaard was absent and the board president said she’s not sure how she would have weighed in on that day.
“Would I have then (voted yes)?” she said. “Maybe.”
But, Midtgaard said she doesn’t think she understood the field trip issue as well as she does now, having drafted the board policy along with Bress.
“I think we do evolve,” she said. “I think we do learn.”
Although she’s open to compromise, Midtgaard said she’s happy with the current board policy on field trips and explained that it was specifically written in general terms because there are numerous scenarios. If the board defines a certain amount of days as excessive then students may miss out on trips that are educationally valuable.
For example, the science camp trip sixth-graders take is tied to curriculum and state standards and she considers it completely educational. Other trips, such as the cheerleading one to Hawaii and FFA, are defined as extracurricular under current board policy.
Still, Midtgaard said she recognizes that there are issues that were pushed to the forefront because of the Pro Bowl request.
“The policy is only as good as the level of implementation and I don’t think that it was altogether smooth,” she said.
And Superintendent Edwin Diaz wants to know why the board chose to rule against the district’s recommendation that the cheerleaders not attend the field trip. That was the question he posed at the end of Wednesday’s meeting.
“Basically, my question to the board was, ‘Where do we go from here?’ ” he said. “I need to know what was the rationale for not going along with the staff’s definition of excessive.”
That the district will continue to deal with long-winded controversies over field trips due to the vague wording of the policy is a concern. Diaz pointed out that district officials have based their past two decisions on their interpretation of the policy – rejecting requests for the cheerleading and FFA trips – and the board overturned both.
And although the board may have set an informal precedent by approving past trips that exceeded three days, the policy was not altered because of those decisions as McRae asserted during Wednesday’s meeting.
Through a PowerPoint presentation McRae claimed that any board members individuals who voted against the field trip were “breaking the law.” The trustee said the board had set precedent by approving those other trips and thus defined “excessive” as six days or less.
But Diaz contacted the district’s lawyer and discovered that that is not true.The board would have had to take a vote to make that change during one of those past meetings, he said. Boardmembers dismissed McRae’s assertion that if they voted against the field that they were breaking the law.
The board is planning to schedule a study session to discuss the field trip policy.
