November 30, 2009
Alternative February Break veterans and hopefuls:
First, many thanks for your patience as we explored the possibilities of continuing the Alternative February Break trip. You know by now that the School Board changed this year’s calendar to reduce the length of the break to two days. This placed a challenge on us in preserving the trip, and the district had to agree to allow students and teachers to leave school for three days in order to participate. After several rounds of negotiations, I was convinced that we had an arrangement whereby many students could go on the trip and that we would pay for the substitutes for teachers missing from classes during that time.
Unfortunately, today, according to Mr. Greening, these arrangements fell through, largely because there remains no written policy for us to meet. In other words, since the district has not yet written the methods or process where we might pay for substitute teachers, we therefore cannot arrange to pay for them, and thus there can be no trip. Mr. Greening asked me to convey this to all of you today.
This is heart-breaking for me, and I know it is for many of you. For my students who would be attending a third year, I offer my especial apologies—I know how much this meant to you during your senior year. We would have raised $40,000 to bring dozens of students this year to Atlanta, Georgia, where terrible flooding has destroyed entire neighborhoods. The need there is great, and as many of you know, Interact and Royal Oak students are amazing at taking on any site. Our last two years in New Orleans and Galveston are ample evidence!
Superintendent Moline has expressed his admiration for the trip and interest in joining us. School Board President Michael Hartman has also worked hard to preserve the trip. It is sad, then, that the trip must be cancelled for what appears to be timing of a policy.
If you have already raised funds for the trip, I ask that you do one of two things with them: 1) Return them to the donors with our thanks; or 2) send them to me so that I may see they reach one of National Relief Network’s communities in need.
I do not know if or when such a trip might happen again. I know what we have done in the past has literally changed the lives of many. Perhaps Royal Oak will do so again one day.
Sadly,
Steve Chisnell
Advisor, Interact of Royal Oak