A proposed policy allowing District 202 school board members to cancel field trips in adverse circumstances tops tonight’s meeting agenda.

The board, which oversees Evanston Township High School, canceled the school’s Latin Club trip to Italy late last March when the conflict in Iraq broke out.

Parents and students expressed outrage that the tour company would not refund their money because the cancelation was within 15 days of the scheduled departure.

“When we had to cancel that, it became quite an issue,” said Margaret Lurie, the board’s president. “Now the policy will read that we have the right to cancel a field trip, which was something that was in the contract but nobody had ever paid much attention to.”

Lurie said the school’s lawyers and the tour company have rescheduled the trip for December, and almost all of the nineteen original participants will be going. She added that although the controversy has died down, the board’s unprecedented action in the spring was contentious enough to warrant a new policy.

The Bilingual Evaluation Action Plan also will be presented to board members at the meeting.

This plan will outline changes to the current academic programs for bilingual high school students.

In the past parents and students have expressed dismay at the unclear transition from bilingual to mainstream classes and the lack of rigor in the program, Lurie said.

Board member Martha Burns added that parents wanted opportunities for their bilingual children to take more honors-level and Advanced Placement classes and felt that their children were not being sufficiently challenged.

The new plan written by the bilingual department will address these concerns regarding the classes’ rigor and will outline a rough timeline for transitioning bilingual students to mainstream classes.

Lurie said the board was unaware of many of these concerns until the bilingual department brought them to its attention.

Through the new plan, “at least now we can see that something is being done,” she said.

Also at the meeting, board members will review the superintendent’s annual report. This report, including high school test scores and other statistics, was presented Oct. 14, but Lurie said the superintendent likes to keep it on the agenda for a few weeks in case anyone has further questions.

The board will meet at 7:30 p.m. tonight at ETHS, 1600 Dodge Ave. The meeting is open to the public.