A Field Trip Through Bureaucracy : The L.A. School System Hinders Pacoima Students on a Journey to a Learning Experience

You may recall the recent story about a Pacoima Elementary School teacher who was concerned about the low aspirations of her students. Few of them made any mention that college would be in their futures, so teacher Dalia Messinger decided to take them on a trip to her alma mater, UC Santa Barbara.

What followed is an example of why the Los Angeles Unified School District is believed to be too cumbersome to work well. It is not enough for LAUSD officials to argue the point. They must prove their detractors wrong through corrective action.

In this case, Messinger was told that the school could not pay for her trip because college visits are not on a list of locations approved for federal and state government funding. Undaunted, Messinger and her charges raised the money on their own. It turns out that the LAUSD’s administrative offices hadn’t supplied the school with a current and complete list of approved “school journeys.”

That list and associated procedures were also convoluted and downright aggravating. Among the 45 pages were instructions to read two other related bulletins. Next, you needed forms No. 78.20, No. 78.20R and No. 78.20RL. Then you were required to note attachments A through C, which were the lists of approved field journey locations and various funding sources for the trips. Attachment C was the most confusing of all, containing no fewer than 36 job numbers and sources.

Simply put, Messinger and her students were not required to raise money for their trip and should be compensated for their efforts. Also, the LAUSD ought to find out just how many other schools are laboring under the same incomplete and inaccurate information and may be avoiding certain field trips altogether as a result.

Lastly, that information ought not to require an interpreter to be understood.