The Trip Not Taken

After prom and detention with a secret crush, field trips just might be the best part of high school.

But which high school a teenager attends this year in Portland determines not only how often he gets to go on these educational excursions, but whether he gets to go at all.

And the reason has nothing to do with the cost of transporting students or any limitations on student activity fees. Instead, it has everything to do with substitute teachers and who does—or doesn't—pay for them.

First, some background: If a Portland Public Schools teacher is sick, the district will tap a centralized budget to pay for a substitute. But if a high-school teacher wants to take one of her five daily classes on a field trip, the money for a sub to teach the other four classes comes from a different pot of money. In that case, the teacher's principal is supposed to pay for a substitute from the school's own individual annual budget, which starts from a base of $40,000, plus $78 for every enrolled student.

That formula is new this year, and it's supposed to narrow the funding gap between large and small high schools. It does do that. What it doesn't address is the fact some schools have access to additional resources outside the district, such as well-funded parent-teacher groups.

Field trips are just the latest expression of the inequities in Portland Public Schools, another blow to the students who may not get to experience what Portland has to offer outside the classroom. Consider Jefferson High School, which had only 440 students earlier this month. That's about 40 fewer students than last year and 400 fewer students than 10 years ago. Partially as a result of that drop, the entire budget for substitutes for field trips at Jeff this year is $800, enough to cover only five substitutes all year for several dozen teachers. By comparison, the school spent $3,116 on substitutes for field trips last year.

Summer Van Der Wolf, a 17-year-old senior at Jeff this year, benefited from field trips last year in more than one way. A student in science teacher Stephanie Pringle's ecology class last year, Van Der Wolf visited Smith and Bybee lakes and the Bull Run watershed.

She called the experience "one of the best parts of last year." And she parlayed her new knowledge of the outdoors into a summer job with the U.S. Forest Service. For tallying and measuring trees, she earned $11.74 an hour—far more than her peers at McDonalds.

But when Van Der Wolf's teacher went to her school's administrators during the second week of school this year, she learned there wasn't enough money to give new students Van Der Wolf's experiences.

"It's not really fair to everybody else at the school," Van Der Wolf says.

Pringle agrees. So does Toni Hunter, a deputy superintendent. "You can't not support it," says Hunter.

As a result, the district is once again paying for field trips to Smith and Bybee lakes this year. But if just a handful of other teachers want to take field trips this year, the school will have to raise money from outside sources to pay for substitutes, Hunter says. And subs aren't the only resource Jeff lacks. (Last year, Jeff's principal, Cynthia Harris, overspent her school's budget by $78,000, meaning the school has less money for other essentials like photocopies and library books.)

Perhaps surprisingly, Lincoln High School—considered PPS's wealthiest—also has a shrinking field trips budget. With three times as many students as Jeff, Lincoln has only about $1,000 set aside for subs for teachers wanting to take field trips. That means Lincoln must also raise money to supplement its sub budget. One big difference is that Lincoln, unlike Jeff, has a well-funded parent-teacher group to turn to for more money.

Schools between Jeff and Lincoln on the socioeconomic spectrum don't have to scramble. For example, Benson and Franklin have a federal grant that can be used to pay for subs so teachers can take field trips.

Next month, PPS will continue its public discussion around reforming its 10 high schools even as it's cutting its general fund budget.

"When we're faced with critical decisions about how we provide core academic subjects, field trips don't necessarily rise to the surface," says Zeke Smith, chief of staff to Superintendent Carole Smith. "Maybe they should.... We have an inequitable system. Where you live is one of the primary factors in determining educational experience. That's not OK."

The education blog ppsequity.org discusses the barriers to field trips for elementary-school students.

WWeek 2015