Field trip business worries it won’t be able to open when school starts again

HALL COUNTY, Ga. — Outside Shelly Echols’ tour company office, there’s a big parking lot with dozens of spaces usually occupied by tour buses. But this spring, it wasn’t.

“The last time I had a person on a bus was the first week of March,” Echols told Channel 2′s Berndt Petersen.

Echols runs a company called “Daniel’s Educational Tours" in Hall County. She has taken students all over the metro Atlanta area and the country. But there has been nothing for the last three months.

When schools closed back in March because of COVID-19, so did all the companies that organized field trips.

“Well, I cancelled over a million dollars worth of field trips for schools,” Echols said.

The pandemic could keep them closed for months to come. As a former school teacher, Echols said she is saddened by the experiences the students miss out on.

“There were probably over 100 days that were cancelled--that students would be outside the classroom travelling---that we had to cancel and refund," she said. "Those are days ‘lost’ for those kids. They’ll never get that experience back.”

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Echols worries this may go on into the upcoming school year and beyond.

As part of its recommendations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised against field trips unless they are virtual.

“They’ve really created a situation where our industry is crippled. No school board wants to go against what the CDC recommends," she said.

Echols believes field trips should be given a chance because of how restrictions have been lifted across Georgia plus people using social distancing and other protective measures.

“If in a year from now, if we’re not doing student travel, we’ll all probably be unemployed," Echols said.

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