Students from William L. Dickinson High School packed yet another Jersey City Board of Education meeting this week, pleading for a return of the school's skiing and snowboarding trip. The board said no again, pointing to an insurance problem with the activity vendor that has gone unresolved for years.
The trip, sought by Dickinson's Winter Activities Club for early 2027, is not on the district's approved field trip roster, as reported by Hudson County View. The Jersey City Board of Education has not approved contracts with the skiing and snowboarding vendor, and this week it voted to approve the permitted field trip list without the excursion included. Superintendent Dr. Norma Fernandez told the board that skiing and snowboarding carry inherent physical risks and can cause high-risk injuries, and that the vendor would not provide a certificate of insurance or any assurance that district students would be covered.
Fernandez said prior skiing trips took place years earlier without proper paperwork and that, in her view, the earlier trip should not have happened. She added that the ski location itself did not lose its insurance, but she would not assure that district students were covered under it. Dickinson students had run skiing trips for two years before the practice ended roughly three years ago, according to the same account from Hudson County View, and interest has remained strong — nearly 2,000 students have shown interest in the trip over the last few years, with seven students reportedly raising their grades after attending similar outings in the past.
A Regulatory Wall the District Says It Can't Get Around
The insurance demand is not arbitrary. N.J.A.C. 6A:27 governs student transportation and transportation contracts, including additional-insured provisions for transportation providers, according to N.J.A.C. 6A:27.
Jersey City schools also participate in joint insurance funds, such as those organized under N.J.S.A. 18A:18B-1, which mandate hold-harmless agreements and primary additional-insured endorsements for high-risk student excursions, per details outlined by the Metuchen School District. Standard risk management guidance across New Jersey districts also calls for commercial general liability policies with minimum limits of $1 million per occurrence for outside vendors running student recreational activities, as described by the Eastern Camden County Regional School District. Board trustee George Blount said the insurance issue was a clear reason for the district's position.
Students Make Their Case, Board Offers Ground-Level Alternatives
Janessa Audrey Martinez, the Winter Activities Club's vice president, told the board the trip would bring the community together and create a memorable experience for students, per the Hudson County View report. Board President Noemi Velazquez praised the students for their advocacy and presentation even as the board held its line. Trustee Melany Cruz Burgos pressed Fernandez on why the ski location was no longer acceptable given that a prior trip had gone forward and other high schools had used the same site; Fernandez responded that the vendor organization itself was the root of the district's concerns.
Looking for a middle ground, trustee Afaf Muhammad suggested students could try snowshoeing or tobogganing instead, and Fernandez said she would approve those alternatives because they keep students on the ground. She had earlier floated the same idea, suggesting students consider a winter sport closer to the ground rather than skiing or snowboarding. Dickinson students have attended nearly every recent board meeting to advocate for the ski trip, underscoring how persistent the push has been even as the answer hasn't changed.
The Economic Backdrop Behind the Push
Dickinson High School, built in 1906 as Jersey City High School, is the city's oldest public high school, operating out of a four-story Beaux-Arts building on a hilltop facing the Hudson River, according to background compiled by USCIS. The school currently has 75 students from low-income families tied to the proposed trip, and in 2019 data previously analyzed by Hoodline, 78 percent of Dickinson's student body qualified for free or reduced-price lunch — 14 percentage points above the district average. For many of these students, a school-sponsored trip is one of the few realistic paths to try a sport like skiing at all.
Fernandez, appointed permanent superintendent of Jersey City Public Schools on June 30, 2022 after more than three decades as a district educator, interim superintendent and deputy superintendent, according to Ballotpedia, is now overseeing a district with a $1.096 billion general fund budget for the 2026–2027 school year, which Hoodline has reported requires $625.3 million in local tax support to cover operating costs and charter school transfers. That scale of financial responsibility helps explain why the board treats vendor insurance gaps as a hard line rather than a formality — an unresolved liability on one trip could ripple across a budget already stretched thin.
The board is also managing a $122 million Energy Savings Improvement Plan involving solar work at 33 schools, a project designed to generate $66 million in savings over 20 years, according to Jersey City Public Schools. For now, though, Dickinson's Winter Activities Club is left waiting on a vendor that has yet to produce the paperwork the district says it legally cannot do without.
