Bluffton middle school eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., will not take place this year, according to Josh Kaufman, middle school principal The following message concerning the trip is on the school website.

Recently, we have been in contact with the travel company, Prodigy Student Travel, who we were scheduled to take our combined 8th/9th grade field trip to Washington, D.C., in May.

With all the current unknowns of the current pandemic, we unfortunately have decided to cancel the trip this year for both current 8th graders and current freshmen students.

Prodigy informed us that out of the hundreds of schools scheduled to attend, there are less than a handful that are holding out to still go and they believe they will also cancel.

In discussions with the company, the challenges of what places will be open and available in D.C., the obvious challenges of students rooming together, and challenges of students on charter busses for extended periods of time are a few of the many hurdles we would have to overcome for the trip to be worthwhile to students.

While we certainly wish that students would be able to still get this experience, we are able to provide good news financially for our freshmen. Only our freshmen students have money involved in this trip, due to the postponement of the trip from last May.

Prodigy has agreed to only keep a total of $81 per family and we will be reimbursing the remaining $81 to your child.

Therefore, you will not lose any money due to the unfortunate circumstances of having to cancel this trip. Any remaining money from DC trip fundraisers will stay in the class fund.

If there are 2 or 3 members in a family who had planned to go, Prodigy will issue a 100% refund of what was paid for the 2nd or 3rd member of the family. These funds will be sent directly to your home from Prodigy in the first couple weeks of February.

We feel that families will certainly benefit from getting the refund and certainly appreciate the travel company providing our school this generous offer, which is much greater than the original agreement.