It has been five years since a group of students from Franklin Community Schools was in Kuji, Japan, but students will have to wait at least another year before they can visit again after this fall’s long-planned excursion was postponed due to coronavirus concerns.
The plan was to have about 10 students go to Kuji, Franklin’s sister-city, in September for Kuji’s fall festival, marking the 60th anniversary of the partnership. The trip would’ve marked the first time since 2015 that students would have gone to the Land of the Rising Sun. It was the first and only time students from Franklin schools made the trip, although students from Kuji have visited Franklin every January since 2007.
The decision to postpone the trip was made shortly after the International Olympic Committee postponed the Tokyo Olympics in March, which were set to take place this summer. During the trip, students would have toured Tokyo and stayed with host families in Kuji, where they would have witnessed the city’s fall festival.
Administrators at Franklin schools were in the midst of narrowing down the pool of about 40 applicants when the decision was made to postpone the trip, Superintendent David Clendening said.
“Everything is postponed,” he said. “We are working with city representatives and Kuji to pick a date for 2021. The applicants who already submitted applications are the group we’ll interview.”
If it is possible and safe for students to travel next spring, that would be preferable compared to the fall, since next year’s seniors would still get to go on the trip, he said.
“I think it’s going to have to fit for both parties. It would be great if the seniors could go, but they’ll do what they can to fit us. The festival time is in September. If we could, I’d love for the seniors to go. I’d pick spring if I could,” Clendening said.
“We’ll make sure everyone is completely safe.”
Franklin Mayor Steve Barnett planned to travel to Japan with the students to visit Japanese companies that have locations in Franklin, such as NSK, Mitsubishi and KYB. If the timing of the rescheduled trip works for him, he still plans to go, Barnett said.
“I’ve been told by a lot of people in Japan that (the fall) would be a good time (of year) to go, but I will leave that up to the schools,” Barnett said.
“I would like to go meet with the parent companies. As mayor, I’m just going to want to do that one time, and if the timing isn’t right, I won’t go. But the kids need to go for that learning experience. They can bring back stuff, what they learned, and relay that to other kids and learn about Japanese culture.”
Planning for the students from Japan to visit Franklin usually starts in August, and both representatives from Kuji and Franklin will discuss whether it is safe for that trip to take place as scheduled in January.
Even if the trip doesn’t happen during the 2020-21 school year, it shouldn’t damper the enthusiasm of next year’s seniors to travel after high school, said Greg Moore, a member of the mayor’s committee for the Kuji sister city relationship.
“I can’t guarantee the world will get back to normal enough that we’ll see a trip next spring semester, but we’ll do everything we can to give them a shot,” Moore said of next year’s seniors. “If not, I hope it will spark their interest in another path.”
