Teachers’ Road Trip? Guess Who Benefits

Forty-five teachers and staffers from an overcrowded, underperforming Anaheim elementary school head for Indian Wells tonight on an overnight bonding and tutorial session. They’ll spend $9,000 in taxpayer money on the trip.

Ridiculous. An outrage. An incredible waste of money, some say.

I say: Big deal.

After what teachers put up with -- days that start at 7 in the morning and can run well into the evenings on many nights -- a short road trip hardly strikes me as a luxurious junket.

Anaheim school officials acknowledge that some people have raised questions about the outing. Specifically, they’ve asked if the money wouldn’t be better spent.

I can only presume those people have never spent any time in front of a class of elementary school students. Or students of any kind. If so, they wouldn’t begrudge any teacher getting a little time out of town to clear the head and compare notes with colleagues.

Throw into the mix that these teachers are from Horace Mann Elementary School in Anaheim, which has 1,124 students -- twice the optimal number. The school is in session year-round, which means that three-fourths of the students are in school at a time. That is a seriously overcrowded school. And like many schools in Orange County, a large number of youngsters -- in Mann’s case, 74% -- are still learning English.

That doesn’t make teaching there hopeless. It just makes it taxing.

The school went after a state grant and got it, to the tune of $416,000. From that pot, the district is spending the $9,000 earmarked in the grant for a get-out-of-school trip.

Could they have gone to a local Coco’s? Yes. Could they have rented a banquet room at a local Holiday Inn? Sure.

But why throw a fit because they decided to drive to the desert today -- with the notion that the road trip might forge some teamwork -- and come back home Saturday?

That hardly qualifies as a taxpayer rip-off. If spending a day together gives these teachers a leg up in the classroom and a little R&R; ... well, they probably deserve it.

The resentment comes because many people don’t know how much time teachers spend after school on lesson plans, grading papers, talking to parents and just plain worrying about how students are doing.

Do all teachers do that? No. Do some try to skate through? Probably.

But the good ones, especially in schools where students are behind the eight-ball because of language deficiency, rack up more headaches than outsiders realize.

The Indian Wells trekkers will get a free hotel room, but they’re also spending time away from their families. That’s not hazard duty, but volunteering to sit in on seminar sessions -- scheduled from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday -- speaks to some commitment.

Teamwork is not a phony word. Yes, teaching is a solitary task when you’re in the room with 30 pupils. But any teacher benefits from another’s wisdom and success. If a professional slumber party brings teachers closer together, guess who wins?

What better way to bond than to have 45 teachers and staffers form a conga line in a Palm Desert nightclub?

So call it a frill if you want. To be sure, the getaway will bring out the wolves who lament how much already is spent on education.

If we hear about third-grade teachers hanging from the hotel chandeliers or running naked down El Paseo we’ll rethink the whole thing.

But if we hear that teachers learned something, built stronger bonds and brought it all back home, then I say, “Hey, knock yourselves out!”

Dana Parsons’ column

appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be

reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.