D.C. Trip Back on for 265 Eighth-Graders

Nearly half of the city's eighth-graders will visit Washington D.C. this spring even though the trip was cut by the financially strapped school district.

A grass-roots effort by parents to organize a trip on their own has been wildly successful, according to Councilman at large Joe DeMio, who organized a group of volunteers at the request of his own eighth-grade daughter.

"This is what makes Strongsville great and separates us from other cities," DeMio said.

A total of 265 students have signed up to take the trip, which has traditionally been part of the eighth-grade curriculum and considered a highlight of middle school by many students. 

But the Strongsville City Schools cut the three-day trip because of the district's ongoing fiscal woes. The district also cut a sixth-grade camp trip, but parents rallied in similar fashion to organize a replacement.

DeMio said he was overwhelmed by the response when he put out a call to parents of the 580 eighth-graders from  from  and  middle schools. More than 450 people attended a planning meeting last week, he said.

The trip will be a private excursion rather than a school-sponsored event and will be chaperoned by parents instead of teachers.

DeMio said that while he initially hoped to fill two tour buses with students, there will actually be six buses. And where he hoped to find one volunteer chaperone for every 12 students, enough people signed up so that there will be a chaperone for about every five students.

The trip is planned for April 2-4. Nowak Tour and Travel, which has organized the DC trip for Strongsville and a number of other area school districts, will bus the students and parent chaperones to the nation's capital and arrange  tours of landmarks over the three days, including a stop on the way in Gettysburg, Pa. The tour company will also provide nighttime security at the hotel where the students stay.

The cost of the trip will be $380 per student, which is $5 more than students paid last year, DeMio said. 

He thanked Mayor Tom Perciak for letting the parents meet several times to discuss the trip at the  Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation and Senior Center.

"Those are things people don't know you do for us," DeMio told the mayor at a City Council meeting Monday.

The school district cut funding for the Washington trip -- about $50,000 for teacher expenses -- from the budget this year. Also cut was funding for sixth-graders' outdoor education trip to Camp Y-Noah; parents of those students also organized to re-instate the trip privately.