By KATIE YANTIS
Staff Writer
MINSTER — Members of the Minster Board of Education met Wednesday night for a special work session meeting to discuss a variety of topics.

Among the topics discussed was the on going conversation about field trips.  The field trips at Minster were being discussed as a result of fuel costs rising.
After gathering all the costs of field trips and weighing the importance to the students board members decided to keep the field trip status where it is now, which is at one field trip per grade level.
“Teachers have done a really good job of making field trips very meaningful, and along with state requirements,” Superintendent Gayl Ray said.
Many of the board members agreed that the costs were not high enough to cancel all of the field trips.
“It’s just not a huge expense if we keep it to one,” Board Vice President Mike Hoelscher said.  
Board member Dale Sherman agreed and said the savings did not seem significant enough to cut the field trips.
If they deem it necessary, board members said they will the topic bring up the discussion again at the end of the year.
Spanish classes were the big topic of discussion Wednesday night during the meeting as well.
After cutting the junior high level Spanish class because of budget reasons two years ago, the Minster school district does not currently have enough spaces open for all the students wanting to take Spanish I.  
Discussion arouse about requirements for foreign languages in college.  The most a student needs for the majority of colleges in Ohio and even out-of-state colleges is three classes of a foreign language, which students can currently achieve.
One solution the board will focus on working out before talking about it at next meeting is eliminating the four and five level Spanish course to provide an additional Spanish I course.  
A parent, whose student was not able to take Spanish this year, was on hand at the meeting and asked why this problem was not discussed and resolved sooner.  
The mother brought up raising the number of students in each class to provide more spots for students to be in the basic level of Spanish.  She also said she thought it was a shame that a great school district can’t provide students classes that will help them achieve further in the future.
“We need to look at meeting students needs, putting student’s needs first, yet being cost effective,” Ray said.
The discussion on the Spanish classes will continue in further board meetings.
Other topics of conversation at Wednesday’s meeting included the recreation levy and getting information out to the public. Board members also will be available to answer questions before November's election.