Superintendent of St. Paul, Minnesota public schools Valeria Silva knows the importance of travel in the classroom-and she's making a point to keep it in the budget.
While educators push to keep pupil achievement high, Silva claims it's imperative to have staffers kept in the loop, both at home and internationally.
She claims teachers can learn tips that they can, in turn, impart upon the students.
Still, high-up members of the school board insist that the St. Paul school system must pull in the reins on travel spending-a part of the budget that is often called into question during times of leaner tabs.
According to a Pioneer Press article, travel spending for attendance to conferences and conventions has shrunk in the past four years by more than 20 percent.
Leaders in education, including St. Paul board chairperson Jean O'Connell, maintain that keeping in conversation with national and international colleagues at conferences and meetings has been, and will always be, important.
"Otherwise, it's easy to get insular and stop seeing the bigger picture," O'Connell told Pioneer Press.
All parties involved recognize the high costs associated with travel: educators have spent up to $442 a night at Boston hotels, almost $35,000 for a workshop in Australia, and in the smaller district of Minneapolis, administrators report spending more than $2 million in travel each year, for the past five years.
Silva has planned a "Strong Schools, Strong Communities," program, that she wants to unveil in her travels to other school districts.
Last year, Silva traveled to Miami, Houston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Cincinnati, Seattle, Oakland, San Antonio and Boston on business.
During her time in San Antonio, she went to a conference detailing the impact of racial inequality on students' achievement.
She and other administrators are fighting to keep this money, allotted for sharing of new programs and ideas in education, in the budget, as St. Paul gears up to trim its expenditure for Spring.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
