GLOVERSVILLE – Amid greater than 60% cost spikes compared to past years, the Gloversville High School class of 2023 senior trip currently does not have enough students to fill up a charter bus.
Gloversville Enlarged School District Superintendent David Halloran said Thursday only roughly 25 students have provided the payments for a potential three-day, two-night trip to either Washington D.C. or Hersheypark, an amusement park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That’s still short of the 55 students needed to cover the cost of chartering a bus for such a trip.
“We didn’t get enough kids to fill a bus [because too few students would have resulted in] the cost for those students [who wanted to take the trip] being exponentially higher, and we didn’t want to do that,” Halloran said.
For comparison, in past years, the per-student cost for the senior trip was typically $150 per student for a one-night trip, but the proposals for a three-day, two-night trip submitted to the school board in December included these per-student price points:
• Washington D.C.: $520 per student; itinerary would have included such opportunities as a trip to the International Spy Museum and a guided tour of Arlington National Cemetery and some of the city’s other landmarks.
• Hersheypark: $492 per student; itinerary would have included the Hershey Chocolate World tour as well as a visit to the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Those costs were also associated with bus and hotel deals with deadlines in early January, and are now likely higher.
Halloran said during a Dec. 12 class of 2023 vote on which trip was preferred, students present voted in favor of Washington D.C. by one vote, but many of the students voting were not actually willing or able to commit the money necessary to go on the trip. He said the class advisers are still hoping to organize a less expensive trip to Hershey.
“They’ve been trying to determine if they could fill a bus with that trip, but that’s inconclusive at this point,” he said.
The school board temporarily changed the fundraising rules for high school classes in December, allowing the seniors to raise money towards the class trip during the spring 2023 semester, in part to make up for lost fundraising opportunities during the COVID pandemic. But Halloran said, so far, no fundraising has taken place that would significantly impact the prospects of even the alternate plan for a trip happening.
He said rising prices, impacted by inflation, may force the current seniors to scale back their trip this year, and compel future classes to be open to a wide range of possibilities.
“In the unfortunate situation where we can’t get enough kids to go for either of those trips, the class might have to reconsider the whole thing and look at day trips more locally, which might not be a bad thing,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for awhile, and I’ve seen classes do everything from Florida trips to Washington D.C. trips, to Lake George trips, or the Catskills, or anything in between. It will really depend on the majority of the class and the success of their fundraising over their four years.”
