Molly Jones saved money in a can for months to pay for a $3,200 trip to Italy with the Evanston Township High School Latin Club.
The 17-year-old should have been on a flight to Rome on Thursday, but instead she and 18 other classmates went to school.
And only a tentative agreement between District 202 and the Massachusetts-based Passport Travel Agency to defer the trip until next year may prevent Jones from losing her money.
Fearing wartime terrorist attacks, ETHS administrators decided March 24 to cancel the student trip to Italy. Passport does not give any refunds if trips are canceled within 15 days of their scheduled departure.
A student exchange trip to Japan was also canceled after the Japanese students backed out of their scheduled visit to Evanston. But because of a clause in their contract with a different travel agency, ETHS students only faced a $50 cancellation fee, rather than losing the $2,600 they each paid for their trip.
“This morning rather than be able to sleep in and be taken to the airport for a 2:30 flight to Rome (Jones) had to get up and go to high school,” said Michael Jones, her father.
Even if the trip is deferred until next year, the travel agency wants to charge students more for the experience, he added.
School Board Vice President Margaret Lurie said parents of students on the Italian trip were upset about the cancellation.
“Who can blame them?” Lurie said.
Michael Jones said neither parents nor students were notified of the cancellations until after the fact.
“We were not as quick in making that decision (to cancel) as we should have been,” said school board member Jane Colleton. “It’s just a hard thing to be responsible for young people, given the potential for terrorists.”
But Colleton said she agreed with the board’s decision, though she regretted not giving families more warning.
In response to concerns that students would lose thousands of dollars they paid in trip deposits, a District 202 lawyer tentatively arranged for the Rome trip to be deferred until August 2004 or for students to take the airline tickets and travel on their own through the end of this year.
Lurie said parents and administrators will meet for a fourth time at the end of April to clarify the deferment plan and make decisions about whether students would travel with the school or on their own next year.
But Michael Jones said most parents will only be satisfied with the deferral if provisions are built into the travel contracts to protect the students and their money.
He said Passport currently has a “morally ridiculous” war clause in their contracts that would have allowed students to keep their money. However, he said he was told by the travel agency that the school had missed the “war clause” deadline by 11 hours.
“(The contract says) if war breaks out in X number of days, you can cancel with some enormous penalty,” Michael Jones said. “As if high school students and parents have control over when war breaks out.”
The Daily’s Erin Ailworth contributed to this report.
