6th Grade Camp Scheduling Issue

I wanted to inform you of a problem we ran into, how it came to be and how we decided to resolve it.  Camp Pinewood, the camp we have attended for the last 10 years, had a series of transitions over the summer.  The Director of Operations and the Camp Director are new.  We worked with them through the transition for our camp experience but someone on their end dropped the ball.  They had us scheduled for camp October 31-November 4. They emailed us on Tuesday evening to let us know they were looking forward to us coming next week and if there was anything we needed from them.  Alarm bells rang and panic ensued. 

We have documented communications regarding our plan to go on November 7-11 but no contract, our fatal flaw.  They booked another school on November 7-9.  Therefore, they bounced us from that as an option because of the contract they had with the school.  We felt it improbable to organize with parents for next week when we were informed of the issue on Wednesday/Tuesday evening.  We looked at other camps for the window we had communicated to our students and families but none were available.  We also considered moving camp to the spring but the power of the experience is the team building and relationship building.  We have it as late as we can stand now because MEAP forces our hand.  We felt that was not conducive to what we have organized camp to be.

Our team decided to use the back half of our planned week for both teams.  The rationale for our decision is that we had already inconvenienced one half of our kids and families, especially the parent chaperones, because of the change from the first half of the week.  We did not want to do that to the other half.  In addition, we are hopeful that the parent chaperones might have some flexibility to move their time away from Monday-Wednesday to Wednesday-Friday. 

I apologize for this inconvenience and any possible strife or conflict that this creates.  We value your support and involvement as parents and detest the idea of causing our supporters anything negative. We value your time and assistance and look forward to its continuation.  If you have any needs of me, please email me at, joel.stoner@staff.spartaschools.org or call our office at 887-8211.

Thank you.