Field Trip Guidelines

General

As you review these guidelines, please keep in mind that we are constantly striving for better and more consistent service. Therefore, failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in your field trip not being scheduled. This means that you will need to check a couple of weeks before the date of each trip to ensure that your trip has been approved by Transportation.

Teachers and Coaches

Requests for field trips must be submitted two (2) weeks prior to the date of the trip and are only available during the hours of 9:00 am and 2:00 pm.
The cost for field trips is $16.25 per hour per driver and $1.83 per mile (adjusted quarterly) for buses.
Activity buses are scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis with athletic trips taking precedence.
The maximum scheduled capacity per vehicle (activity and state owned) is 60 passengers. Special needs capacity is up to 33 passengers and 2 wheelchair spaces per state owned vehicle.
All requests must be submitted to the staff member at your location, who is responsible for entering them into the Field Trip Manager system.

Staff who enter Bus Requests

You can enter a request for your location only. If another district location is paying for the field trip, you must enter that district location code in the comment section or your location will be billed. We can only bill to a school district location code or budget account, but not an outside agency.
Please do not enter a request with an arrival time before 9:00 a.m. or with a return time after 2:00 p.m.

You may include your desired arrival time in the comments section, however, buses are not guaranteed until 9:00 a.m.
There is an exception for trips to Roper Mountain Science Center for the Human Growth and Development program ONLY (please indicate this in the trip purpose field).

After school trips should not have an arrival time before 4:30 p.m. , however, buses are not guaranteed until 5:00 p.m.
When entering arrival and return times, please do so in 15 minute increments.
When entering a request that requires a Special Needs bus, in addition to Regular Education buses, please enter separate requests, as the requests are processed by two different bus centers.

A trip requires a Special Needs bus when any of the following are needed: seat belts, wheel chair space, car seats, safety vests or an aide. Indicate in the comments section if the wheel chairs are manual or power, in addition to the number of wheel chairs, car seats, safety vests, etc…

The maximum capacity that can be scheduled per bus (activity or state owned) is 60 passengers. However, keep in mind that these occupancies are according to seating 3 Elementary students to a seat. Special Needs buses hold 33 passengers (3 to a seat) and have 2 wheel chair spaces.
If you would like to request an activity bus, or a particular driver, please indicate this in the comment section – please note, requested bus and/or driver are not guaranteed.
The TRIP CODE field is to be used only for Community Based Instruction (CBI) or Roper Mountain (RMS) trips.

Principals

Please have a backup employee trained to use the Field Trip Manager system. If you need training for a new employee, or need a new user account setup, please email Sue McCalmont, or call 355-7330.