By Charlotte Matherly, contributor
The Rockingham County School Board delayed a vote to adopt a new overnight field trip policy in hopes of hammering out details and providing assurances to teachers and parents.
Board members have wrestled in recent months over how to balance safety with what’s feasible. One board member, Matt Cross, has alluded to a recent incident that sparked a proposal to always have at least one chaperone of the same sex as the students attending a field trip.
Now, board members are leaning toward simply requiring two chaperones, regardless of their gender, on overnight field trips. They were set to vote on both proposals Monday evening but delayed the decision until Sept. 22.
Nicholas Zimmerman, a teacher at Elkton Middle School, said neither one represents “the very best” of what he believes county schools could do.
“The first proposed policy outlined potentially limits based off of biological sex,” he told board members Monday evening. “The second proposed policy may give too much leeway.”
Joni Lam, who teaches at Turner Ashby High School, echoed Zimmerman’s concern and said both proposals could pose a financial barrier to field trips. Sometimes, she said, students must fundraise both for themselves and their chaperone. Adding an extra person to the mix could limit travel opportunities.
The board’s chair, Sara Horst, among others, said she wasn’t ready to vote yet. She said she wanted more time to have “some reassurances and some conversations” with teachers and parents about what the new policy might entail.
Other board members were hesitant to wait.
“In the beginning this policy was about safety, and I mean, how safe are we now?” Hollie Cave said. “If it’s truly about safety, how long are we going to delay it? And if it’s OK to delay it till whenever, is it even worth changing?”
For board member Jackie Lohr, a new concern popped up. In both iterations of the field trip proposal, the board directs chaperones to undergo a training on policies and expectations before accompanying students on field trips – and they haven’t compiled that training yet.
“We’ve come to a pretty good middle ground, but it is just occurring to me: We don’t have a training,” Lohr said.
She asked the school board to either devise a training plan before approving a new policy or delay the rule’s effective date to give them more time to come up with one.
Pleasant Valley Middle School addition underway
The school board also awarded an $8.5 million contract to Harrisonburg-based Nielsen Builders, Inc., to build an addition to Pleasant Valley Middle School.
The full $10 million project will add nine new classrooms to increase the school’s capacity by 123 students, totaling 500, to accommodate growth in its attendance area. It’s earmarked for the 2027-28 school year.
As a result, Lohr floated the idea of redistricting and “moving kids into that space” and asked Superintendent Larry Shifflett to keep board members informed of enrollment and population growth data so they can prepare to redraw attendance lines if needed.
Also of note
School started in Rockingham County on Thursday, and Shifflett said there are currently 11,752 students. The district has also hired 132 new teachers, leaving zero teaching vacancies throughout the entire county. Sixty-five of those new hires are in their first year of teaching.
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