MEET THE BAUMANN SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS
SCHOOLS
To the Commissioner of Education:
1. Petitioner Joseph P. Giardina is a resident and taxpayer in the Bedford Central School District. He resides in Mt. Kisco, NY 10549.
2. Respondent Board of Education of the Bedford Central School District, P.O. Box 180, Mt. Kisco, New York is legally mandated to provide a sound basic education to eligible district residents. It exercises its authority to prescribe a course of study for district students and exercise superintendence, management and control of the district’s educational affairs.
3. The Academic Community for Educational Success (herein A.C.E.S.) is the “alternative” high school for selected students in the respondent school district. “Many of them have been developing low self-esteem and self-destructive habits since birth; and they continue to have extremely stressful and damaging experiences outside of school.” Petitioner refers the Commissioner to annexed Exhibit No. 1, “Overview: ACES COSTA RICA TRIP” for a fuller respondent rationale for annual international travel subsidized by taxpayers.
4. NY Const, Article 11, section 1, mandates that “the legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all children of this state may be educated.” This is understood to mean that the state must at least make available “a sound basic education.”
5. The Education article “requires the State to offer all children the opportunity of sound basic education. Such an education should consist of the basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills necessary to enable children to eventually function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury. If the physical facilities and pedagogical services and resources made available under the present system are adequate to provide children with the opportunity to obtain these essential skills, the State will have satisfied its constitutional obligation.
6. The 2002-03 budget of 72.3 million dollars supports the education of approximately 4,100 students. This particular budgets funds academic and extra-curricular programs that go far beyond a basic education mandated by the New York State Constitution and court precedent.
7. On January 15, 2003 the Respondent board passed a motion, drafted by its legal counsel, authorizing up to $15,000 of taxpayer funds to “defray the cost of the educational component of the field trip, including the cost of chaperones” for voluntary foreign travel to Costa Rica scheduled for February 26th through March 3, 2003. Petitioner refers Commissioner to annexed exhibit #1 “ACES Trip to Costa Rica” Proposal and annexed Exhibit #2, 1/15/03 “Agenda Addendum.”
8. Students who do not elect to travel to Costa Rica are not penalized academically. According to the A.C.E.S. proposal “the academic and the specific topics will be the same” as those who do take advantage of the taxpayer funding.
9. Petitioner alleges district students are receiving already the opportunity to obtain an education that enables them to speak, listen, read and write clearly and effectively in English, perform basic mathematical calculations, be knowledgeable about political, economic and social institutions and procedures in this country and abroad, and acquiring the skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes to participate in democratic self-government without embarking on international taxpayer subsidized travel.
10. Subsidizing foreign travel is not a fundamental right under the state constitution. In other words, trips to Costa Rica are not required to fulfill its constitutional obligations. No educational deprivation is at stake here.
11. If respondent district did not pay for the travel and lodging costs of chaperones as authorized by the 1/15/03 motion, the cost of each student’s travel would increase by an amount equal to the cost of chaperone travel divided by the number of students traveling. As such, the district is subsidizing voluntary vacations with public moneys (Appeal of Christe, Ed. Dept., Decision #14,349).
12. In addition, district personnel is raising money through fundraisers and arbitrarily distributing it to families on an undisclosed “sliding scale.” As such, the school is engaging in illegal distribution of public moneys to private individuals. A.C.E.S. is an integral part of the school district. Its teachers are employees of the Bedford Central School District. Petitioner refers Commissioner to the annexed Exhibit #1 for a fuller explanation of the districts fundraising beyond the property tax.
13. The voluntary participants are students in the district’s alternative high school, Academic Community For Educational Success (A.C.E.S.) along with four chaperones. Presumably, based on respondent board discussions, the chaperones are teachers employed in the respondent district.
14. Annexed hereto is Exhibit #3 which includes the relevant video clips of respondent board in its 12/18/02 and 1/15/03 meetings that buttress and support allegations made herein
15. The petitioner brings this appeal to the Commissioner because a dangerous precedent is established by respondent board that is only now coming to the public light; and it is destined to continue based on history and existing board plans bolstered by its public discussion. Unlimited, extravagant and voluntary travel of students and teachers, subsidized by the taxpayer, stretches the definition of a field trip to the absurd.
16. Approval and funding of annual international travel in this magnitude approved by respondent district must be stopped. Routine and conventional field trips are understood to be those excursions that fall within the metropolitan area of respondent district.
17. On November 13, 2002 the respondent board adopted policy for “Field Trips and Excursions.” Annexed hereto is a copy of said policy as exhibit #4.
18. According to the Field Trips and Excursions policy, “requests for field trips outside of the continental United States must be presented to the Superintendent prior to any discussion with student participants and families” with ninety days notice. The very notion that an eight-day trip to Costa Rica is a “field trip” is ridiculous.
19. According to the written and recorded record, the A.C.E.S. field trip proposal was presented to the student participants and their families prior to the initial board approval granted at 12/18/02 meeting in violation of the respondent’s written policy adopted just a month earlier. The proposal indicates travel and lodging costs already arranged with a travel agency presuming ex-post facto approval.
20. As it turns out, based on respondent’s discussions at the 12/18/02 and 1/15/03 meetings, The ACES Proposal, the A.C.E.S. staff takes a big trip every year at taxpayer expense. The difference is this year it is publicly discussed for specific board approval and formal appropriation of public funds.
21. Respondent board president thinks nothing odd of “field trips” to foreign countries at taxpayer expense. She even stated that the board would consider funding 100% of trip expenses in the future at the 1/15/03 meeting.
22. Based upon board discussion at the 1/15/03 meeting, the respondent board president, Dorothy Fallon, indicated that the A.C.E.S. program historically takes a trip of this magnitude annually confirming what the A.C.E.S. Proposal claims.
23. The petitioner was completely unaware of such extraordinary travel experience funded by the taxpayer. His examination of three years of board agendas finds no mention of A.C.E.S. travel seeking board approval. Moreover, based on discussions with three board members who served in the 1990s, none recalled any such travel.
24. Based on the respondent board’s “Field Trips and Excursions” policy, no ceiling is provided for the financial liability of taxpayers to fund these trips and excursions. Further, no defining geographical limit to field trips is offered leaving open the door to calling any type of travel, no matter how extravagant, a “field trip.”
25. Based on board policy carried out in the 1/15/03 motion there are no financial limits established for curricular travel leaving the door open to trips bordering on the extravagant and the absurd.
26. Under existing board policy, space travel would be permissible!
27. The record before the Commissioner indicates clearly the respondent has engaged in approving past A.C.E.S. “field trips” to international locations and will continue to do so at taxpayer expense until stopped by the Commissioner.
28. Aside from the Costa Rica trip in question here, another trip is “scheduled” for a different cohort of high school science students to the Grand Canyon for April 12-16, 2003.
29. If and when petitioner receives the details on said Grand Canyon trip requested in January 2003 under the Freedom Of Information Law, he will forward same to Commissioner as a separate exhibit to demonstrate the district’s insatiable travel bug.
30. In light of the high terror alert in which the country finds itself it is irresponsible for the district to even consider foreign travel, much less so with public moneys. However, board was blithely assured that there is nothing about which to be concerned.
31. Mr. Albano is a self-interested party traveling free on the taxpayers’ tab. His opinions are highly subjective and naïve, especially since he will be responsible for children who already exhibit “self-esteem” and “self-destructive” issues “outside of school.”
32. Eight days in Costa Rica qualifies as “out of school” to Petitioner.
33. The United States is currently on a war footing for direct military action in Iraq. For the foreseeable future, the United States will be waging a “war against terrorism.” Traveling as a school group of United States citizens abroad makes those traveling to Costa Rica a potential target for attack. It is foolhardy by respondent to authorize such travel at this time.
34. Respondent strains the boundaries of funding public education beyond the accepted starting point of providing a “sound basic education” to the limits of what a reasonable person would agree is an acceptable form of enrichment.
35. Petitioner alleges this funding is unreasonable, unwarranted, and illegal. It necessitates intervention by the Commissioner to give direction as to the practical limits of taxpayer funding of enriched academic programs. Annual taxpayer funded trips to Costa Rica, France, Arizona and the Grand Canyon (just to name a few) test the economic patience and credulity of petitioner and foreshadow only more expensive, extravagant future travel.
36. By respondent’s own admission, the proposal for the trip states that those students not going will accomplish the same academic goals as those traveling. If the same academic goals can be obtained within the district’s boundaries it does not make sense to pay $15,000 to achieve them outside the borders of the United States unless isolating twenty or so students for seven days serves a hidden purpose.
37. Respondents claim that annual travel to a foreign country is essential to the students’ “social” success. Petitioner refers Commissioner to the annexed exhibit # 1, Overview: ACES COSTA RICA TRIP, which indicates there is psychiatric intervention in the “annual” trips to foreign countries to “remove students from their damaging personal environments”
38. Psychiatric intervention via annual foreign travel is an unreasonable demand on the taxpayer. The respondent board will continue annual foreign travel based on its non-academic goals of teaching “specific cognitive and emotional skills” culminating in a “seven-day trip to a foreign country” unless the Commissioner stops this experimental program. Petitioner cannot accept the psycho-social hypothesis that taxpayer funded international travel “is essential.”
39. Respondent’s inattention to the true nature and details of this ACES trip to Costa Rica runs the real risk of lawsuits in three different areas: personal injury, educational malpractice and medical malpractice.
40. The board has not considered that the following aspects leave it wide open for legal challenge and financial penalty from: a) the risk of claims resulting from a terrorist attack; b) the risk of claims resulting from education malpractice and medical malpractice lawsuits; c) the risk of claims for practicing psychiatry without a license; d) the risk of civil lawsuits stemming from violations of U.S. Constitutional mandates against the establishment of religion since Costa Rica is the Mecca for new-age pagan religions. Hands-on “experiential” learning in the sacred rainforest is tantamount to practicing/establishing religion; d) the risk of parental lawsuits for possible violations of parental rights to raise their own children.
41. The A.C.E.S. staff is not medically certified to apply “experiential” psychiatric methods, teaching undisclosed “cognitive and emotional skills” in these “counseling trips developed years ago through the Yale Consultation Center.”
42. The Costa Rican trip is based on a psychiatric counseling method developed in the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. The staff members traveling to Costa Rica as chaperones are not medical doctors.
43. The ACES trip to Costa Rica denigrates each student’s home as a “damaging personal environment.” Broad generalizations of pathology unfairly stigmatize students.
44. A balance has to be struck between providing a sound basic education and the degree to a sound basic education is reasonably enriched. The respondent board demonstrates no understanding of opposition to such school sponsored travel.
45. The respondent board president gave a sigh of exasperation when a member of the public expressed his opposition to the trip at the 1/15/03 meeting. She said that nobody ever complained about these types of trips in the past. The public did not know, however, that such “field trips” even occurred, much less were paid for with tax dollars.
46. Funding annual international trips to students and teachers takes unreasonable advantage of local taxpayer. Teachers are determining curriculum based on their travel wishes funded directly by the district taxpayer.
WHEREFORE, in light of the illegalities inherent in the 1/15/03 motion to subsidize annual and voluntary foreign travel to achieve academic, social and psychiatric ends; the respondent’s inability to enforce its own travel policy, and its negligent assessment of the multitude of risk inherent in the trip to Costa Rica, the Commissioner should:
a. Cancel travel plans to Costa Rica, or in the minimum,
b. Cease and desist from using public funds for private purposes
c. Order a stay of the 1/15/03 motion approving the public funds for teacher and student travel to Costa Rica;
d. Order a stay on this Costa Rican trip and all other travel beyond the metropolitan area until the threat of terrorism subsides and the United States is not on a war footing or in the state of war;
e. Order that those students who necessitate psychiatric intervention receive same from qualified, licensed personnel;
f. Order respondent to cease and desist from “experiential” learning techniques;
g. Order respondent to stop fundraising activities for the Costa Rica trip and arbitrary and capricious disbursement of public monies to private individuals by district personnel;
h. Establish clear and reasonable guidelines for “field trips” and “excursions.”
February 12, 2002 Submitted by Joseph P. Giardina,
Petitioner pro-se