GHSD makes final decision for European travel

Sabrina Kooistra
Times Junior Contributor

 

From March 24 to April 3, 114 people ventured abroad on a trip to Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, and France, under the direction of Strathmore High School (SHS) teacher Kenton Zandee.
SHS offers this opportunity as an educational experience for students which went from being community-led to being orchestrated by the school and Golden Hill School Division (GHSD).
In the past few months, several school trips, specifically SHS’s Europe trip, have been in serious jeopardy as incidents in Belgium and France evoked concern for the safety and well-being of those travelling there. This left the school district in an incredibly difficult position.
After the attacks on Paris in mid-November, students from Calgary Board of Education were barred from travelling anywhere in France and the Calgary Catholic School Board halted all international trips from proceeding.
Similar consequences were seen when Calgary’s William Aberhart High School hiking trip to Northern California in 2000 turned into a devastating loss of two students and a chaperone when they were pulled into the ocean by vicious waves.
According to Bevan Daverne, superintendent of GHSD, the school district did not want to starve its students of opportunities such as travelling abroad by reacting a fear that may not materialize, such as terrorism, which other school boards have done now and in the past.
When assessing the risks of these trips, GHSD came to a simplified two-point conclusion which served as reasoning for allowing these students to gain from this cultural experience.
Firstly, despite the fear of other terrorist attacks, GHSD staff noticed that community members continued to plan international vacations, even to Europe.
Secondly, terrorism has been seen in several locations around the world, even in Canada, and it seemed irrational to bar eager students from this opportunity where the feared threats could be seen anywhere. Jan Wathen, SHS’s Career Practitioner, travelled with the school to Europe and felt confident in GHSD’s resolution.
“There was a lot of people involved and decision making was made at a high level and EF (Education First) obviously would have been on the ground in Europe,” said Wathen. “I’m going to trust decisions made by the school board and everyone involved.”
Throughout the past few months, GHSD organized meetings with families of students and parents travelling with the school to discuss the detailed itinerary as well as any related risks.
According to Daverne, families of students planning on travelling to Europe with their school continued to be enthusiastic about the opportunity as well as confident despite the danger posed both in Brussels and Paris in the last year.
“I know that there was concerns prior to going on the trip about the safety of being in Europe at this time, but being on the trip I didn’t [feel unsafe] because all of the people there had still decided that going, even in this time, was worth it,” said a student who travelled with SHS.
Out of approximately 250 students from around the school district who planned on going on any school excursion, only a handful of families pulled their students from the list and not necessarily because of the threat of terrorism.
Ultimately, though, the Canadian government had the final say as to whether or not students would be given clearance, and even after the attack on Brussels, no travel advisory was posted.
As a result of the decision made by GHSD and the lack of a travel warning to Europe by the Canadian government, all trips in the school division resumed planning.
Depending on the risk at some destinations, itineraries were slightly adjusted in the best interest of all those attending. All SHS trips remained as they had before. The unnamed student felt others would agree saying, “I’m glad that I made the decision to go even with the danger … I’m glad that I went and I think I would’ve regretted not going and letting terrorism control my life.”