DECATUR - Students may think of field trips as a welcome break from the school routine, but educators think of them as academic necessities.

The state of Illinois owes the Decatur School District $20,000 for last year's transportation costs, and has cut this year's reimbursement by $1.4 million.

But even in tough times, said district spokeswoman Debbie Alexander, field trips are an important part of the education experience.

"Field trips are not really a factor in the issue we are facing within the transportation fund," Alexander said. "It is actually a very small portion of our transportation costs. Our major transportation costs are getting students to and from school. We spend approximately $3.5 million getting students to and from school, believe it or not."

For a lot of children, school trips are their only opportunity to have the experiences offered, she said, and if a trip is educationally enriching, it can have an impact on a student's achievement. It costs less than $7 a year per student to send elementary kids on field trips, and only a little more than $3 for middle and high school students, and that money is figured into the annual budget, she said.

"We have done everything we can to ensure these experiences only available through field trips can still occur for our students," she said.

Jasper County schools considered cutting field trips out of this year's budget after hearing from the state that their transportation funds were being cut to 58 percent of last year's levels.

"That's enormous for Jasper County," said Superintendent Dan Cox. "We're the biggest district geographically and last year we traveled 460,000 miles (transporting students)."

His district is county-wide and every student except those who live within the limits of Newton rides the bus. The state requires districts to provide free transportation to students who live 1.5 miles or further from school. And Jasper County is still waiting for one of last year's transportation payments from the state, to the tune of $214,000.

No changes are planned in Lovington schools for this year.

"We have asked the teachers to make sure they have a strong and significant connection to the education process," said Lovington Superintendent Roy Smith. "We believe field trips are an important part of education."

Cerro Gordo is being conservative with field trips, but not eliminating them, said Superintendent Brett Robinson.

"We might take, on average, one per grade level, maybe two for some grade levels," he said. "It depends on how the field trips tie in with curriculum for each grade level."

Warrensburg-Latham Superintendent Emmett Aubry said field trips will be one of the last things to go in a budget crunch.

"They're too important," he said. "They're tied directly to curriculum and sometimes the only experiences kids get is what the school does for them."

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