Usually a sure sign of spring in the nation’s capital, along with cherry blossoms blooming, is the arrival of tour buses packed with kids on school trips. But not this year.
Many schools put the brakes on their traditional spring-break trip to Washington. Normally, 2 million kids go on group trips to D.C. during the spring and summer, but fewer than a million are expected this year, said the city’s convention and tourism bureau. The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being blamed for the drop in bookings.
Tour operators said the terrorist attacks and anthrax threats hit about the same time that schools traditionally book their spring trips–in September and October. Michael Donovan, the chief executive officer of Winged Victory Ltd., a New Hampshire-based student tour operator, said his company lost 80 percent of its bookings to Washington compared with a year ago.
At Grayslake Middle School, usually about six buses filled with 300 8th graders make the annual spring trip to D.C. But after school officials canceled, students decided to bring D.C. to Grayslake. They spent three days last month touring classrooms converted into 18 various D.C. landmarks–from the U.S. Capitol to the Vietnam War Memorial to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. They built scale replicas of each site, acted as tour guides for other visiting students and handed out brochures sent from the real-life places, teacher David Beilat said. Some students even carried cameras to snap photos, he added.
Meanwhile, Hinsdale Middle School students are dusting off their suitcases. Administrators have rescheduled their D.C. trip after canceling it earlier in the school year. “Students were scheduled to go in November and, of course, after Sept. 11, like most schools, we canceled,” Principal Edward Dulaney said.
But after the holiday season, the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics passed without any terrorist incidents, school officials rescheduled trips for late April and early Mary.
The White House, Capitol and Washington Monument recently reopened to student tours after being closed since September because of security fears.
