[Dhsbb-jazz] Trip Planning thoughts

[Rob Kerner]

In light of the recent events and emails from Alex and Tom, Cynthia and I would like to share our views.

As the part of the incoming board, (me as President, Cynthia assisting), we and others met with Tom in late August to start planning the welcome back BBQ and first booster meeting.  At that time we learned of the Disney and NOLA trips.  Either at that meeting, or the first booster meeting, is when we learned from Tom that typically these trips' planning starts in the previous spring.  Neither of these trips had been discussed last spring at any of the boosters meetings, so we had no idea the planning should have been started already.  And even if we had known, Cynthia and I were so busy with the NY trip that we personally would have been unable to start on next years' trips.

So yes, trip planning started later than usual, and we are sorry that happened.  But even with the late start, Alex (and Sue and Melinda with Disney) were able to come up with plans and budgets.  I started contacting Tom M in early November, urging him of the need to meet and discuss the trip for approval.  Unfortunately, we never even considered that getting an administrator would take so long, as this is a relatively new district policy just started last year, with no guidelines on how it is implemented.  This was sadly a big lesson learned this year, and is a topic I plan on pursuing with the district.

We also are disappointed for the students, and do hope they can join the Disney trip.  Going forward, there are obviously things can be done differently, one of which is for the current year's boosters, with Tom’s guidance, to take the initiative to start planning the following year's trip; and to convey to the incoming board and members that they, in turn, will be responsible for relaying that same information the following spring.  Lastly I will make sure the district spells out guidelines for administrators and reasonable timeframes to get them.  I feel strongly that trips should not be cancelled due to a lack of an administrator.

-Rob Kerner
Band Booster President
Cynthia Kerner


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/dhsbb-jazz/attachments/20181218/fb09c7b4/attachment.html>