Tens of thousands of elementary students in Fresno Unified may lose funding for field trips and sixth-grade camps as the school district struggles with an ongoing budget deficit and enters contract negotiations with the teachers’ union.

The district’s board of trustees adopted a budget this summer that includes $30 million in cuts, including the elimination of funds for this year’s field trips for students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as the camps for sixth graders. Individual schools will decide whether to hold field trips based on their own budgets and fundraising.

Parents of elementary kids said they learned about the elimination of field trips and sixth-grade camps during “Back to School” night events earlier this month.

The state’s third-largest school district operates 71 elementary schools, and their field trips cost an estimated $2.2 million annually, according to Fresno Unified.

District officials said they used one-time federal pandemic relief dollars to fund annual field trips for elementary students beyond what the district usually budgeted. In recent years, Fresno Unified students have taken field trips to Camp Green Meadows near Yosemite National Park and Monterey Bay Aquarium.

“Prior to receiving those funds, those field trips often occurred, but they were dependent on fundraising, whoever can afford it or who can’t. So we weren’t able to guarantee the same experience for everybody,” said Ben Drati, deputy superintendent. “But when we got those additional funds, we were then able to use these funds to guarantee that everybody has access to these experiences.”

Field trips are still possible, Drati said, but it will depend on individual school sites’ budget and fundraising.

“It’s a value decision we’re making about what we fund and don’t fund,” Drati said. “If you pay for it, just realize you’re gonna have to pull resources from other areas to be able to fund that.”

Years of shrinking enrollment have led to consecutive budget shortfalls for Fresno Unified. Since its budget peaked at $2.3 billion in the 2023-24 school year, the district has made reductions of $26 million, $34.9 million, and $39.8 million in the last three fiscal years.

Drati said Fresno Unified has sought to keep reductions away from classroom instruction and student services, but with the passage of this year’s budget in June, the district decided to make cuts on the school site level for the first time.

The district chose to cut field trip opportunities because they are only a good addition to the curriculum, but the district’s core mission is classroom education, Drati said.

Students looking forward to the field trips

Whitney Bortz, parent of a fourth grader at Jackson Elementary, said her kid’s class went to an animal habitat in Northwest Fresno last year and had a great time learning about nature and environment.

“It’s narrowing their worldview in some ways to not have experiences outside of what they know on a daily basis,” Bortz said. “I know many schools are prioritizing English and math scores, but students aren’t really motivated to learn those things if they’re not contextualized in purpose and things that they enjoy.”

Bortz said her oldest daughter, who is now in 9th grade, “absolutely loved” her first sleep-away camp at Wonder Valley, located in the foothills near Sanger, during her elementary years. In her sixth-grade year, she had a positive experience spending time outdoors with classmates at Calvin Crest near Oakhurst.

“It makes me sad because it’s a social justice issue that the families who can afford it, their kids are the ones who are going to still get these non-traditional educational experiences, and the families who cannot afford it, will not be able to take their kids on these experiences,” Bortz said.

Another parent, Shelly Spencer, said the cuts are disappointing for kids who have been looking forward to these opportunities.

“In our school, where there’s a dual immersion program, it’s always something that the entire grade does together,” Spencer said. “It’s a bonding experience for the students across their classrooms really to do together, to ride the bus together, and eat lunch out together, and just have that experience and those fun memories and photos.”

Spencer, who’s a parent representative at Jackson Elementary’s School Site Council, said she heard from the principal that a basic field trip for a grade costs about $1,000, including two buses, entrance fees, and snacks.

Jackson Elementary is a smaller school in the Roosevelt region at Fresno Unified. The school serves about 330 students from kindergarten through sixth grade.

Parents have begun discussing the possibility of fundraising, Spencer said, but it would be difficult to carry out due to the time constraints.

“Maybe a grade happens to have a bunch of parents that are involved and can pull it off, but what if this grade over here doesn’t have that ability to do it. So do we do school-wide fundraising, but then how do you divvy it up?” Spencer said. “There’s just a lot of questions of resource sharing and equity that haven’t been really resolved yet, which leaves a lot of questions for how to plan.”

Political football between district and union

In a written statement, Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, called out the district’s central office for spending approximately $1.5 million on travel last year and continues to spend public dollars on leadership consultants and costly litigation.

“What makes this even more frustrating is that the district apparently left teachers to deliver the bad news to students and families,” he wrote. “Educators should not be put in the position of explaining or defending a central-office decision they did not make.”

District officials said the whole school district spent approximately $1.5 million on travel last year. Of that amount, about $900,000 supported professional development opportunities for teachers working at school sites, the district said.

The $3 million for enrichment activities was part of the budget cut discussions in the spring and all reductions were presented publicly and approved by the governing board, Drati said, while much of the public attention focused on staffing reductions.

During the last bargaining cycle in 2023, the district agreed to provide $10 million annually for FTA-directed expenditures benefiting students. Based on current estimates, roughly $20 million remains unspent of the total of $30 million, according to Drati.

“I encourage sites, if they’re struggling, to go talk to the FTA leaders to see if they can help because that money was supposed to be dedicated towards supporting these kinds of efforts, so they have the means to do it,” Drati said.

In another press statement to The Bee, Bonilla said the union believes the district has the resources to fix the issue, because the district budget has $122 million in unrestricted reserves.

Fresno Unified’s current reserve level stands at 5.52%, a decrease of 0.11 percentage points from the previous school year. The district estimates that this level will drop to 4.73% within two years, according to the district budget presentation in June. State law requires districts to maintain a minimum reserve level of 2%.

“FTA is asking Fresno Unified to first examine its available resources to restore field trips, at the same time, the union has made clear that it is willing to help,” the statement wrote.

Nearly all the one-time funds that the union secured during the last bargaining cycle have already been allocated to student services and programs, Bonilla wrote in the statement.

The union said students should not be forced to choose between existing supports and field trips, and it’s asking community members to sign a petition calling on the district leadership to meet with the union and find a solution.