Travel-Agency Fiasco Leaves Them to Own Devices : Students Seek Funds to Reschedule Trips

Students, parents and staff members at four local schools are embarking on a variety of fund-raising efforts to pay for field trips to the East Coast that were canceled last week when the Mission Valley travel agency that had booked them ran out of money.

“Our main interest is to get our kids to Washington,” said Cari Ehrlich, whose daughter, Leah, was one of 145 eighth-graders at Wangenheim Junior High School scheduled to leave for the nation’s capital on Wednesday.

Wangenheim is one of four schools in the San Diego Unified School District to have prepaid trips costing a total of almost $200,000 canceled last week when Anthony and Leo Casias, co-owners of East West Travel, informed school officials that their business was having cash-flow problems and that they were planning to file for bankruptcy.

East West’s financial problems left a group of students from Emerald Junior High School in El Cajon stranded in Washington last week. The travel agency had booked the students’ flights to Washington but ran out of money before paying for the group’s hotel rooms and air fare home.

Expense Money Wired

The students were able to complete their trip only when the Cajon Valley School District wired them expense money and American Airlines agreed to underwrite their return plane tickets.

Although some parents at the affected San Diego schools, including Bell Junior High, Lewis Junior High and O’Farrell School of Performing and Creative Arts, have met to discuss the possibility of suing the travel agency or even the school district, they are mustering their efforts to raise funds all over again to make sure that their children can take their intended trips before the end of the school year.

Ehrlich said the parents from Wangenheim hope to get their children on a plane to Washington on Thursday, just one day later than the original departure date.

With the help of City Councilman Ed Struiksma, who has been calling local corporations to ask for donations on the school’s behalf, the parents had raised more than $40,000, Ehrlich said Monday.

Group to Seek District’s Help

She also said a group of parents from each of the four schools will be attending today’s school board meeting to ask the district to pay the balance of the trip if the school is unable to raise enough on its own.

Students at Bell originally raised $15,000 to pay to East West Travel by redeeming aluminum cans. Now they are trying to come up with new money-making schemes for a planned June 6 trip.

Wearing buttons that read “Ask Me Why I’m Mad,” they have spent the past few days contacting corporations, media outlets and the San Diego Chargers to ask for donations.

“The kids were not willing to lie down and play dead,” said Joan Auer, a teacher who was to serve as one of the group’s chaperones. “The adults were going to just turn it over to the district’s lawyers, but the kids wanted to do something.”

$7,000 Raised by Monday

Auer said $7,000 had been raised by late Monday afternoon.

Dr. Walter Romanowski, principal of Lewis Junior High, and Florence Johnson, principal of O’Farrell, said a group of parents and teachers from their schools are trying to come up with an alternative for the canceled trip but have not actually raised any money.

“I just don’t know how we’re going to do it in such a short period of time,” Romanowski said.

Romanowski said that some parents have told him they feel the school should pay for the trip, but that he doesn’t feel the school can be held responsible for the travel agency’s failure to fulfill its contract.

“Any time you deal with a firm, that’s a chance you have to take,” Romanowski said. “If (the Casias brothers) walk away from this thing and get off by filing bankruptcy, that would be a real tragedy.”

Melanie Petersen, deputy general counsel for the school district, said she will brief the school board on the cancellation of the trips and the concerns expressed by parents and school staff in a closed session before its public meeting this afternoon.