Fort Myers Booster Club to Meet; Band to London?

Tuesday April 4, 2006

In the wake of Fort Myers, Florida, school officials' recent decision to cancel a planned marching band trip to Great Britain for the New Year’s Day London Parade, the band's booster club will be meeting tonight to discuss sending the students without school approval. If they go under those conditions, the band will be marching without uniforms and some band instruments. Bravo for the booster club -- but the picture painted is a scathing indictment of the Fort Myers school board.

The school's decision to forego the trip because of fears of terrorist attacks on foreign soil ("Florida school to London: 'We don't have trains blowing up in America' ") is disappointing to many. Despite international attention to the decision in recent days, including careful, but seemingly puzzled, comments by Florida Governor Jeb Bush regarding the questonable wisdom of the decision, a confirmation of London’s safety by London mayor, Ken Livingstone, and a cancelled plan by London Parade officials to fly to Florida in order to speak for three minutes during a board meeting public comment period, the school board has refused to reconsider or speak to press, according to the South Florida News-Press.

Decision has positive side

In this writer's opinion, international student travel offers the educational chance of a lifetime -- the chance to begin to understand other cultures on different turfs and to understand that life outside these United States can be very different. In that light, the Fort Myers school board's refusal to hand that chance to students is puzzling in the extreme. However, the decision may be shaping student opinion of world events in its own positive way. Judging by comments on the News-Press forum, students are fast forming opinions on whether fear of terrorism should keep travelers home -- ever -- and the consensus seems to be that the band should play on.