Before the start of the school year, the school’s administration sent out an email to sponsors of competition clubs, requiring two chaperones for all field trips taken on the school bus. This is a departure from previous policy, which required only one chaperone for day trips and two for overnight trips. The administration should reexamine their new chaperone policy, as requiring extra chaperones doesn’t help, but rather burdens club sponsors and puts unrealistic pressure on parents. Overall, the HiLite staff believes that reverting to the field trip policy of previous years would greatly benefit the vast amount of clubs which make excursions every year.

Most clubs at this school only have one sponsor, therefore the second chaperone usually is a parent. This places an unnecessary burden onto the club sponsor and student leadership, as they need to find a parent who’s willing to pay for a required background check and also spend a day or weekend with a club, all while coordinating the trip and dealing with logistics. The parent chaperone is also typically unfamiliar with the club, and therefore unable to provide too much assistance to the sponsor. Most of the time, the parent spends the trip passing time on their phone or catching up on work, instead of helping with the club.

The idea that two chaperones are needed for all field trips also makes the unjust assumption that the club sponsor, an experienced teacher, cannot oversee a group of 10 to 20 students. Through tools such as Remind, Slack or Discord, club leaders and sponsors are easily able to communicate with students who may be in a different part of a building. The HiLite staff contains members of various clubs which travel multiple times per year, such as Debate, Quiz Bowl, Model U.N. and Science Olympiad, and we’ve not encountered a time when a single club sponsor was unable to preside over all students. 

This new policy also places a burden on parents. The assumption that clubs can easily find a parent chaperone neglects the fact that many students are from single-parent homes, have younger siblings or have parents who work on weekends. Most parents are simply unable or unwilling to spend their weekend away from home travelling across the state, when they have important responsibilities at home.

Administrators should be more conscientious of the burdens this policy places on club sponsors, student leaders and parents and reexamine this policy. The policy in place last year, where one chaperone was needed for day trips and two were needed for weekend trips, is more than fair and should be reinstated, as requiring additional chaperones ultimately negatively impacts the great activities and opportunities found at this school.