California Education Code Section 35330 states that “No group shall be authorized to take a field trip or excursion authorized by this section if a pupil who is a member of an identifiable group will be excluded from participation in the field trip or excursion because of lack of sufficient funds”. Wait a second…

How can you have a Field Trip if no one has to pay?

In the case of Outdoor Education, your school can prevent a student from attending because of poor behavior or low grades. Your school cannot prevent a student from attending because of an inability to pay. Your Outdoor Education experience must be provided to all of your students free of any mandatory fees.

Now we have to understand how to both take your students on field trips (an important part of education) and pay for those field trips (a reality of life…nothing is free).

So how do we pay for Outdoor Education?

Here’s an excerpt from CA Assembly Bill 165, a 2011 proposed law addressing pupil fees: “The bill…is not to be interpreted to prohibit solicitation of voluntary donations, voluntary participation in fundraising activities, or school districts and schools from providing pupils prizes or other recognition for voluntarily participating in fundraising activities.”

In effect, AB 165 was written in a manner that does not prevent schools from fundraising through voluntary donations.

Voluntary Donations for Something That Matters

Schools can’t get around California laws that disallow requiring individual pupil fees for educational activities. You can, though, still involve parents in raising funds for worthwhile activities. Take the time to let them know the value of Outdoor Education and how this experience will positively affect their child’s growth.

Be honest with parents about laws, and couple this honesty with candidness about limited resources and personal responsibility.

If some parents who could donate choose not to, because they believe the cost can instead be born by the school district or wealthy donors, then field trip possibilities like this one will evaporate for everyone. Through talking with schools over the last 15 years, we’ve found that with the right approach parents do understand the situation, chip in with voluntary donations as they are able, and even help more enthusiastically with fundraising to make up shortcomings.

How to Ask for Voluntary Donations

Here’s an example of a proper way to raise money for your Outdoor Education experience:

“The sixth graders from our elementary school will be attending High Trails Outdoor Science School for a 5 day field trip. For all of our students to participate, we need to raise $ _____; this comes out to $ _____ per student. To pay for this experience, our elementary school will be fundraising  and accepting voluntary donations. Our deadline to raise this amount of money is _____. If we meet our goal all students will be eligible to attend High Trails. If we do not meet our goal all voluntary donations will be returned to the parents and fundraiser amounts will be used for future student educational activities.”

The wording here is what is important; you can solicit, or ask, for voluntary donations and for help fundraising. You can’t hint, imply, or otherwise indicate that you might require it.

We Support the Spirit of the Law

At High Trails, we have never, ever, since the year 2000, turned down an extra scholarship request for a deserving student. When a school asks, we say, resoundingly, “If you feel a student needs a scholarship, you’ve got it”.

We can give extra scholarships only because we are fiscally solvent. We are fiscally solvent only because the majority of our students pay for their experience.

Read our Fundraising Guide

As a school, you probably have a time tested way to ask parents for donations, put on fundraisers, and make things happen. We asked lots of schools for ideas like yours, and compiled a model for putting together the funds for an Outdoor Education field trip. It has timelines, handouts, tips, and is definitely worth reading. Check it out here: fundraising guide.

Let Us Know If We Can Help

We want you to be successful in raising funds for your students to attend High Trails. You are our customer, and your paying students keep us in business. But we’re also in this business because we truly believe that what we do is incredibly important for the balanced growth of your students and the future of our earth. Nature is nice. Dirt is good. And school teachers…you know how hard you work. Thank you.

At High Trails Outdoor Science School, we literally force our instructors to write about elementary outdoor education, teaching outside, learning outside, our dirty classroom (the forest…gosh), environmental science, outdoor science, and all other tree hugging student and kid loving things that keep us engaged, passionate, driven, loving our job, digging our life, and spreading the word to anyone whose attention we can hold for long enough to actually make it through reading this entire sentence. Whew…. www.dirtyclassroom.com