By Kathleen Acuff

From now on, a committee consisting of an administrator and the students and parents who plan trips for the Los Altos High School Eagles Marching Band will determine who goes on those trips and who receives a trip scholarship, said Joe White, the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District’s associate superintendent for business services, last week.

Band members brought back the silver from the London Wind Band Festival last summer - and some resentment over free rides from those who worked to pay their own way. Band director Ted Ferrucci was criticized for taking along some band alumni and chaperons, including his fiancée, at the band’s expense.

The business manager said the school’s Associated Student Body (ASB), which oversees the operating funds of all clubs and classes, has “a well-established review, involvement by administrators, all done correctly.” But in cases in which established clubs have a history of successful trips and have raised the money to fund another, the ASB “may not ask all the questions.”

Open discussion was “the only thing overlooked in Ted’s decision,” White said. “I think the intent was totally there, the history of trying to do the performance was there. Now it will be discussed - way ahead of time.”

Ferrucci had charge of a 45-member band traveling in high tourist season to perform in London, Stratford-upon-Avon and Bristol. Ferrucci was unavailable for comment at press time. White, however, said the first aim of anyone taking students on such a trip should be their “absolute safety” and the second should be a successful tour.

“If it was me, and I was going with 30-some-odd students, I would surround myself with people I know and trust rather than just the first seven parents who lined up,” he said, adding that he would take his wife.

“To me, going to a foreign land, especially nowadays, the chief concern is safety.

“Now we have a committee that … takes safety really into consideration but (uses) a more democratic process,” White said.

The district makes a per-student funding allocation to its high schools each year, and the principals decide how to distribute the money to their departments, White explained. School clubs and organizations, like the band, receive further funding from ticket sales, fund raisers and donations. Their funds go into the ASB account, and the ASB cuts their checks.