School Board Under Fire for Funding Hawaii Trip

The English Montreal School Board (EMSB) came under fire this month after announcements that it spent $10,000 in public funds sending staff to Hawaii for a week. Staff were attending a three-day educational conference at an upscale beachfront hotel in Honolulu, said the CBC. A similar conference in the Dominican Republic cost the public $20,000 last winter.

Board Defends Spending on Travel
School board officials deny any wrongdoing in the matter, claiming professional associations and the five administrators and teachers who attended the Hawaii conference paid for part of the costs. The board alleges sending educators to conferences abroad "fell within the normal rules and budgets for professional development."

Lester B. Pearson School Board chair Marcus Tabachnick feels school boards shouldn't be blamed for spending large sums on conferences. In a statement last year he said school boards are "required by law" to spend a portion of their yearly budget on professional development.

Politicians Critical of Trips Abroad
Reaction from Quebec's National Assembly has been critical, however. Action Démocratique leader Gérald Deltell says there are better ways for school boards to spend money on professional development, particularly when money is scarce. After the Dominican trip, Quebec's ministry of education responded by slashing travel and training budgets for school boards, - a likely indication the government would rather see boards focus spending on development and not travel.

Edutainment or Professional Development?
One of the papers delivered at the Hawaii educational conference looked at the controversial subject of edutainment, the blending of education and entertainment. When assessing whether an entertaining activity is really educational, teachers are often asked to describe the relevance of the activity to the curriculum and to outline at least one educational objective the activity will help students to accomplish.

A CJAD reports says the Montreal educators were sent to Hawaii to learn how to to prevent school dropout, a huge problem in Quebec. So, how well did the Hawaii trip address their need to learn about dropout prevention>?

School dropouts were the subject of three presentations listed in the conference program. Each of the talks were a small part of a 90-minute session, shared between three or four groups of presenters. This puts the total time devoted to the question of dropout prevention around the 90-minute mark, spread over three days at the beachfront hotel.

Another important calculation when evaluating the appropriateness of a proposed school activity is how much it costs, and how many students will be able to participate. Registration for the 10th annual Hawaii International Conference on Education comes in at under $500 USD per educator. The price includes full documentation, admission to all exhibitions and presentations, and several meals. A little primary school math tells us that the majority of the $10,000 was spent on travel and lodging for the five educators who made the trip.

Evaluating Spending Decisions
Would a teacher even submit a proposal for a field trip that only five students could attend, and for which the majority of the money spent would go to pay for travel? Even if the trip was a unique opportunity to learn something important, what principal would approve the trip when funding was short everywhere else in the school? And would any principal consider a week-long field trip abroad, just so students could spend 90 minutes on-task?

Technology allows contemporary education to take place at a distance via web conferences and distributed learning. Teachers are now facing the possibility they will soon be seen in the same light as doctors who attend conferences at vacation destinations, hosted by big pharmaceutical companies. Travel is sometimes necessary for education to take place, but if the priority is being placed on the weather at the beach it isn't education that's taking place.