The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School transportation subcommittee voted at their meeting last Monday night to cut off-Island field trip fees in half for student groups in the next school year. Committee members said they hoped the reduced fees would ease the financial burden on small groups that might otherwise have to sacrifice off-Island activities.

“Since the high school wants to encourage our youngsters to have those experiences, we looked at what could we do,” said superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss, of the search for an alternative to charging groups $400 per trip. Now the school will charge $200, to cover the direct costs associated with travel. “That would, for at least a year, give us an opportunity to see if this is going to work,” Mr. Weiss said.

The $200 trip fee will cover the costs of the driver, fuel and any tolls. Other costs associated with fleet maintenance and driver benefits, which previously were added onto the total group price, will be absorbed in the high school budget.

“When you add up not just the cost of the bus but these other costs, they’re getting substantial. And they’re causing some trips to be cancelled,” said high school finance manager Mark Friedman.

“Put all that together, and little Johnny isn’t paying $5 to go to the museum, he’s paying $25,” added Mr. Weiss.

Committee members agreed. “This is part of the essence of curriculum,” said Susan Parker. “I can’t imagine that we wouldn’t try to subsidize, to the greatest extent possible, those field trips.”

Mr. Weiss said the reduced price will only be feasible for the school if it does not result in a large spike in the number of field trips taken by students. “We can’t have the number of trips suddenly double,” he said, adding that there may not be enough buses available in the off-Island fleet to accommodate more trips anyway.

“We looked at this as a pilot year,” the superintendent said. “If it’s going to work, then we’ll be in good shape. If it’s not going to work, then we’ll have to make some kind of other arrangements.”

At the high school district committee following the transportation subcommittee meeting, principal Stephen Nixon outlined the school advisory council’s annual school improvement plan for the 2010-2011 school year.

The action plan calls for teachers to complete scope and sequence plans for their courses and submit those plans to a database accessible by all teachers. According to Mr. Nixon, this should help teachers coordinate topics across subjects, so students are learning similar topics in each class at the same times throughout the year.

The plan also calls for a second annual wellness day at the high school. One day last December students were offered a variety of workshops to promote both physical and emotional wellness. “It was such a success that we are going to expand it,” said Mr. Nixon.

And next year, Mr. Nixon said the school will form a committee to revisit the student discipline and behavior policy, which has not been evaluated in more than a decade. “We will look at our entire discipline and behavior policy and see if it’s what we need, if it can be tweaked, if it is effective,” he said.

The school will look into adopting senior privileges including a student lounge or a separate area for senior students to eat lunch. “There are a variety of senior privileges that are in effect in other schools. They may or may not work here,” said Mr. Nixon. The school will also try to ease the adjustment period for ninth graders entering high school. “Freshmen are going to need a lot more remediation. We need to teach our freshmen how to be students in a high school setting. Perhaps we need to make freshman year more of a school-based instruction time,” he said. On the other hand, he said that seniors should be given a little more freedom as they prepare to graduate and go on to college or careers.

The advisory council’s plan also calls for developing a new, mandatory life skills course, “to help students become better students,” said Mr. Nixon. The course will aim to teach basic life skills such as how to open a checking account, how to use a credit card responsibly and how to interview for a job. Mr. Nixon said the eventual goal is to make the course a requirement for graduation.

The principal reported that the improvement plan for the 2009-2010 school year had been for the most part successful. Last year’s plan outlined a new requirement for eight mandatory research papers for students across their four high school years, and called for an awareness day to outline key student life issues, which became wellness day. The only part of the plan not fulfilled was mandatory community service work for students. “Our kids have a lot on their plates,” said Mr. Nixon, adding that the school wants students to participate in service work by choice, not by requirement.

School committee member Leslie Baynes said he was happy with the report, noting that too often lofty goals fall to the wayside. “This shows a measure of accountability,” said Mr. Baynes.