When 10-year-old Abby Stone went on a field trip to the state Capitol last school year, she saw the House chamber, and decided she wanted to be a state representative when she grows up.

The Centerville Elementary fifth-grader had been looking forward to going to Gettysburg with her classmates this year. "In school, we're learning about Gettysburg and I wanted to see the battlefields," Abby said. "My older brother, Isaac, he went last year and he said it was really cool."

But there won't be a fifth-grade trip to the Gettysburg battlefields this year, and this has some Hempfield School District parents up in arms.

The district has been stirred in recent months by a debate over field trips — and more broadly, about the notion of educational equity among the have and have-not schools of an economically diverse school district, and the autonomy of the PTOs that raise funds for those schools.

It is a debate that has been waged elsewhere, and may be waged more frequently, as financially strapped school districts turn to parent-teacher organizations to subsidize educational extras.

In Hempfield, the battle was joined when Superintendent Brenda Becker announced that field trips were facing elimination because of budgetary constraints.

Some parents reacted with dismay, and PTO representatives from the district's seven elementary schools met to cobble together a plan to save field trips.

The superintendent said field trips could be reinstated if the PTOs paid all of the costs — in the past, the district generally paid for transportation, and the PTOs covered admission costs.

For the Centerville Elementary PTO, this presented no problem. The parents of that well-to-do school community raised more than $21,000 in a single fundraiser last month, and knew they could garner whatever money they needed to bankroll field trips.

But not all of the PTOs had budgeted for the full costs of field trips, and not all were sure they could afford to pay — or wanted to pay — for every grade to take field trips.

Mimi Geib, president of the Mountville Elementary PTO, said that it made little sense to her to "deplete all of our funds for one day out of a 180-day school year."

So, the PTO representatives decided that this year and next, students in grades two, four and six would take trips.

Field trips would have to be tied to the curriculum. And, in the interest of equity, Becker said that each grade, across the district, should take the very same field trip from now on.

In the past, Centerville sixth-graders, for instance, had traveled on coach buses to Washington, D.C., while other students took school buses to local sites. "It had started to create a divide in the district," said Hempfield School Board President Bill Jimenez, in an email.

Becker said the administration had been planning to address the issue of field trip equity last year, but the issue seemed moot when field trips were on the budget chopping block.

This year, with field trips set to continue, at least for some of the grades, establishing equity was imperative, "especially given the growing diversity in our district," the superintendent said.

Becker said some families can afford to provide more experiences and material resources for their kids than others can — this "is a fact of life."

But "what students are able to do during the school day in regard to learning should not be dependent on whether they are part of the 'haves' or 'have nots,' " she said.

Johnna Krawizcki, vice president of Rohrerstown Elementary's PTO, put it plainly: "Just because you have more money doesn't mean you get to go on a better trip when you're in school."

She said that in school, "every kid should have the chance to have the same educational experience."

Mimi Geib, the Mountville PTO president and a learning support aide in the Hempfield district, is exasperated by the field trip controversy. There are so many more important issues facing education right now, she said, asserting, "This is such a small issue."

To Stephanie Rittenhouse, a Centerville mother of two, it's not a small issue at all.

Rittenhouse said she used to work in museum education, and she thinks children "understand material better when they can see what they are studying."

She strongly objects to the elimination of field trips for the first, third and fifth grades, and to the insistence on trip uniformity.

"We're a diverse district. We're not going to have equity," Rittenhouse said. "If you follow that line of reasoning, there will be no unique activities left at the schools."

Rittenhouse circulated a petition decrying the changes to field trips. She collected more than 300 signatures, and presented the petition to the school board in early October.

She said she found Becker and the school board to be unresponsive and unyielding. "The root issue to me isn't the field trips any more — it's how the whole issue was handled, and how we're being attacked for trying to have a discussion," Rittenhouse said.

"We were made to feel, 'It's just some Centerville parents whining,' " she said.

Centerville mothers were portrayed at a school board meeting as "a bunch of spoiled rich moms who wanted to have their way with field trips," agreed LaNeicia Stone (mother of 10-year-old Abby).

Stone, co-president of the Centerville PTO, is an engineer who grew up poor. She credits a school field trip to an electronics company for helping to spark her interest in engineering.

She said her field trip stance is not about "having a crying fit and being pouty — it's about making sure that my kids get to experience what I did."

Sue Boyd, treasurer of the Centerville PTO, said she thought the school board figured, " 'Maybe if we ignore it, it will just go away.' ... That's only fueled people's fires even more. People don't like to be ignored."

School Board President Jimenez countered: "It's not that the board hasn't addressed it. We have. But it's not the answer they want, so there has been a concerted effort to distort the intent and the details of the policy and galvanize support."

LaNeicia Stone said she's heard the dispute referred to as "Field Trip-Gate."

But, she said, "We only want what's best for our kids. I'm not talking about going to Dutch Apple [Dinner Theatre] to watch 'Pinkalicious.' I'm talking about doing things that go along with the curriculum."

Boyd said she was "not at all happy" with the insistence on field trip uniformity.

"I felt like, our parents raised this money, our kids have been going on good trips all these years," Boyd said. "Now we're forced to work with five other schools where that may not have been a priority for them."

Christine Rhoads, co-president with Stone of the Centerville PTO, said in an email that the district's uniformity goal "doesn't take into account the different traditions and events that have evolved at the elementary schools."

She said a particular PTO's "spending decisions should not be governed by what other PTOs choose to do."

"Taking away autonomy from a group of parents who serve a specific school … does not serve anyone well," Rhoads said.

Becker said PTOs have the power to spend their own money as they see fit, and the district "celebrates the uniqueness" of each of its schools. But she said school officials are responsible for what happens during the school day, and curriculum, policies, procedures and educational opportunities have to be consistent across the district.

Jimenez said he could not fathom how an effort to ensure equality of opportunity could be considered a threat to PTO autonomy.

"We restrict many areas of external decision-making to provide equity, as well as avoid future potential litigation. Remember, parents can take their children on any trip at any time if they deem it educational, without putting the district in the position to be liable for the inequities it may create," he said.

These issues of PTO autonomy and equity have surfaced in other school districts.

According to Slate.com, an online magazine, a proposal in California's Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District to establish a central foundation for donations and fundraising has met with fierce resistance from wealthy parents.

In that district, one school has an additional $2,000 per student to spend on enrichment activities because its parents raise so much money — while another school has just $100 to spend per student. School officials want to spread the wealth, but parents in moneyed Malibu want the funds they donate and raise to stay in their own children's schools.

When one school's PTO has more resources than another, that can "set up an uneven playing field for access," said Manheim Township Superintendent Gene Freeman.

In Manheim Township — where the schools range from Brecht, on the edge of Lancaster city, to Reidenbaugh, whose students draw from Bent Creek and other affluent neighborhoods — the elementary schools are not required to take the same field trips, though all outings must be tied to the curriculum. That is also the case in the Conestoga Valley School District.

In Hempfield, second-graders will take a walking tour of downtown Lancaster this school year. Fourth-graders will visit the state Capitol and state museum in Harrisburg. Sixth-graders are to visit the planetarium at the state museum.

This means the elimination of Centerville's usual sixth-grade Washington trip, as well as the annual fifth-grade trip to Gettysburg.

Hempfield Assistant Superintendent Christopher Adams said it's possible that annual field trips could be reinstated in two years. This will depend on PTO funding and on the ability to align the field trips with each grade's curriculum, he said.

Johnna Krawizcki, of the Rohrerstown PTO, said her PTO will budget for those field trips, and raise funds accordingly. She has faith that field trips will be restored to all of the elementary grades.

LaNeicia Stone is not so sure: "I have the feeling that once they're gone, they're gone."

Contact Sunday News staff writer Suzanne Cassidy at scassidy@lnpnews.com.