Putting together a budget can be rough.

It can be especially arduous for a school district that finds itself in financial straits, and controversial and unpopular steps may well need to be taken.

And yet one still wonders about Fresno Unified’s recent decision to eliminate money for all K-12 field trips, something that would have set the district back by $2.2 to $3 million.

As things now stand, individual school sites and groups like the Parent Teacher Student Associations will need to foot the bill for such trips.

Recently GV Wire featured a thoughtful piece by Anthony W. Haddad in which he reminisced about exciting school trips he took years ago to places like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Big Fresno Fair. Mr. Haddad clearly benefited a lot from those experiences, and he’s hardly alone.

Bringing the Constitution to Life

I came to appreciate and value field trips early on in my teaching career. Back in the Eighties I once taught eighth graders in a private school in Stockton. Among other things, I had to prepare them for a test about the U.S. Constitution. Passing the exam was a prerequisite for getting a diploma at the end of the school year.

Our studies of the Constitution and American government included a bus trip up to Sacramento, where we toured parts of the California State Capitol and also sat up in the gallery of the State Assembly for a while, witnessing the lawmakers in action.

Needless to say, the class time we spent later on looking at the Bill of Rights and the amendments packed a far bigger punch because of that excursion. Another outcome: everyone in the eighth grade earned a passing grade on that year’s constitution test.

Learning About Theater Close-up in Berkeley

Several years later, when I taught at Edison High here in Fresno, some colleagues in the English Department and I organized field trips to the Berkeley Repertory Theater.

It was a popular trip that required several buses to accommodate demand.

In the weeks before the performance all of us spent time in our classes reading through the likes of Much Ado About Nothing or Gailieo so that our classes would be well versed in the texts before seeing them brought to life in front of them.

On Field Trip Day we rolled into Berkeley around noon, which gave students a chance eat lunch somewhere close to the theater.

And then we filed into the building, found our seats, and took in the matinee performance.

The high point of the visit, though, was what followed the actual play. About fifteen minutes after the curtain came down on the final scene, all of the actors appeared again, all of them now dressed in everyday clothes. They sat down in folding chairs on the stage, made some opening remarks, and then fielded questions from our students and their peers from other schools who were also in attendance. The students’ questions were always astute and probing. Why was this particular song chosen to accompany a particular scene? Why did the stage design in the final act look the way it did?

To say that these excursions were a roaring success would be quite an understatement.

As Edison High’s German teacher, I also put together a field trip to San Francisco every spring. The trips took us to either the German consulate or the Goethe Institute, and the staff at these sites always provided us with a colorful, lively program that gave the students a deeper insight into contemporary Germany and those occasionally bizarre German customs.

Our itinerary also always included a lunch at Schroeders, a restaurant in the financial district that offered a variety of authentic German dishes. It’s one thing to hear about food items like Wienerschnitzel or Spaetzle in a classroom; it’s far more memorable to have something like that sitting on your plate and staring you in the face.

Research Proves the High Value of Field Trips

It’s sad to think that enriching experiences like these are now in jeopardy for thousands of Fresno Unified students in the months to come.

And it’s also perplexing, given the findings of many academic studies that spell out the benefits of school field trips.

In 2014 Marc Behrendt and Teresa Franklin, both professors at Ohio University, published a review of the scholarly work done in this area. Although their work focused on science-oriented trips, they also concluded that field trips in general “offer an opportunity to motivate and connect students to appreciate and understand classroom concepts, which increases a student’s knowledge foundation, promoting further learning and higher-level thinking strategies. With understanding comes confidence and intrinsic motivation.”

In 2022 research conducted by BYU, Johns Hopkins University, and the Heritage Foundation determined that students who have gone on several field trips receive higher test results, do better in their classes, and develop greater cultural awareness.

The authors also found that such trips don’t only improve academic outcomes, but also support character development. Heidi Holmes Erickson, an assistant professor at BYU who helped to write the paper, argues that cultural field trips bolster academic achievement as well as students’ social skills and “social engagement habits.”

It’s puzzling — and, frankly, incomprehensible — that FUSD doesn’t see such opportunities for learning and personal growth as part of its core mission.

Given what the research shows, one hopes that Fresno Unified will soon reconsider its stance. Perhaps another look at the budget – including the district’s $122 million in reserves – could uncover the $2.2 to $3 million needed to finance these enriching experiences.

It would be a treasure hunt well worth pursuing.

About the Author

Before his retirement, Steven Roesch taught English and German for 30 years in Fresno Unified School District.

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