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Caution Regarding Breakaway Tours
Published on Sep 13, 2017 11:34
Hi everyone,
Recently a number of students have received unsolicited e-mails, text messages, and even phone calls from the representative of a student travel organization called Breakaway Tours. The emails contain a promotional video about the kinds of trips they offer, a series of personal questions and a request to provide the personal contact information of other students/friends. The representative has also set up a meeting tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. for our students at the Coffee Time on Holland St. where she will distribute additional promotional material and attempt to recruit students.
We are very concerned about this and want you to be aware that neither the school nor the SMCDSB support, endorse or recommend these kinds of student trips for a number of reasons:
- We do not approve of their strategy of contacting students behind their parents' backs.
- We do not approve of their requesting other students' personal information without their parents' informed consent. This is a violation of the Canadian Anti-spam Legislation (CASL)
- Students are pressured to recruit their friends with the promise of discounted or free travel.
- The trips are usually to out-of-province or out-of-country destinations supervised by young adults (21-25 years old) and do not observe the same traveler to supervisor ratio required by our school and board field trip procedures. They provide a 1:25 ratio, while similar trips run by our school are usually 1:4 or 1:5.
I strongly urge you to discuss this with your teens and discourage them from attending the meeting on Thursday. We at the school cannot stop them, of course, but rest assured we will not allow any promotional materials or recruitment into the school, nor will we permit students to miss classes or be late due to their participation in meetings.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
God bless,
Brian McKenzie,
Principal
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