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Public school teachers will no longer be allowed to accept free trips and other benefits from private companies for arranging and participating in educational travel for groups of students and parents, according to a ruling by the State Ethics Commission.

Department of Education officials have already been told the free trips given teachers by private educational travel companies are “impermissible gifts” that violate the state ethics code, and that the practice should be stopped. The commission will now notify the superintendent in writing of its decision.

Les Kondo, commission executive director, is not insisting on cancelation of trips already scheduled and booked, including one set to begin within weeks, citing the complexity and potential cost of unraveling travel reservations.��

The issue was discussed by the State Ethics Commission at its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday. Kondo said the commission was alerted to the issue by questions from a Windward Oahu school. The school was not identified, and Kondo said other schools are believed to offer similar trips.

Ethics staff were unable to find out how many schools, teachers, or students the new ruling will impact because there do not appear to be data collected about past trips by the Department of Education.

One company identified by Kondo is EF Educational Travel. According to , the privately owned company is based in Lucerne, Switzerland, boasts over 45,000 employees, and has offices in 53 countries.

“The teacher, the recipient of the free trip, is driving all the different parts, the organizing, selecting the vendor, promoting the travel, that’s the big concern for us,” Kondo said.

“It’s done by the teachers themselves, not the school, not the principal,” Kondo said.�� “They organize among themselves to figure out who else might go along, what other teachers might be willing to be chaperones, and then they select a travel company, the educational tour company that organizes the trip.”

“It’s all teachers at that point,” he said. “Then the teachers file a document requesting the school’s authorization to travel.”

Teachers then solicit participants by sending letters home with students and making presentations in their classrooms, usually outside of school hours, Kondo said. Principals are not involved in the trip organizing.

Some trips occur during vacations, while others involve school days. In the example presented to the commission, the�� cost was $2,600 per student, and $2,900 per adult.

The company was paid $160,000 by participants in that trip, Kondo said. A previous trip involved seven teachers and cost more than $200,000.

“The money doesn’t go through the school, it goes directly through to the travel company,” Kondo said.

Teacher-chaperones receive roundtrip air fare, hotel accommodations, breakfasts and dinners daily, all entrance fees for sites visited, all gratuities, and some also receive a stipend and “points” for future personal travel, Kondo said.

Kondo told the commission that the free travel for teachers violates the gift provisions of the ethics law, which prohibit any employee from accepting a gift, including a gift of travel, “under circumstances in which it can reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the…employee in the performance of the…employee’s official duties or is intended as a reward for any official action on the …employee’s part.”

Teachers solicit students and parents to take part in the trips in order to assure that enough people sign up to earn free travel for chaperones, a practice that also appears to violate the “fair treatment” section of the ethics law, which prohibits “soliciting, selling, or otherwise engaging in a substantial financial transaction with a subordinate….”

As recently as 2012, the commission reminded teachers that the ethics code prohibits them from entering into financial transactions with anyone they supervise, including students. In a 2012 case, a Mililani tennis coach was fined for offering private tennis lessons to students who were members of the school’s tennis team, which she coached. Asking students and their parents to sign up for expensive trips would appear to trigger the same ethics issues.

In addition, there is a built-in conflict of interest, since teachers may naturally want to select the travel company offering them the greatest benefits, rather than basing their choices on the best deals, or the best educational experience.

Kondo said ethics officials in some other jurisdictions have also concluded the free trips are not permitted.

For example, a quick online search shows that found similar arrangements violated the Florida ethics law. The opinion also held that there would be no conflict “if the teacher’s school district, rather than the teacher, were to administer the tours, free travel, and other items.”

Similarly, an August 2000 advisory opinion by the Ohio Ethics Commission said teachers and administrators are prohibited from accepting any compensation from a private tour company unless the payments are part of a contract between the school district and the tour service.

Kondo told the commission that he and his staff will work with the Department of Education to restructure the travel programs to comply with the ethics code.

That did not completely satisfy at least one commissioner who expressed concern that the commission will be seen as “out to squelch educational travel opportunities.”

As a result, the commission took the unusual step of asking the staff to defer issuing a public “ethics advisory” about the travel issue until commissioners have an opportunity to review and comment on its wording. The commission’s routine practice has been to distribute public advisories that describe and explain the actions it takes in significant cases like this.