Zoe Cogger was supposed to spend her Grade 12 year on two trips.
The National High School Dance Festival in Pittsburgh. The Bloomsday Run in Spokane.
"I was pretty sad when I found out," the 16-year-old told The Canadian Press.
Edmonton Public Schools has cancelled all international excursions and school-based exchanges for the 2026-27 school year. That includes trips to Thailand, France, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica and Portugal, and it includes the United States.
Why the board says it did it
Superintendent Thompson wrote to parents in June.
A recent field trip had students come face to face with civil unrest. The board hasn't said what country they were in.
"Couple this with reported global fuel shortages, recently reported public health concerns and ongoing military conflict, which introduces further unpredictability and risk to international travel," Thompson wrote.
He said he doesn't take the cancellations lightly, and that the board will reassess before the 2027-28 school year.
The American trips are the part worth noticing
Pittsburgh and Spokane aren't conflict zones.
The board's stated reasons are global, and its policy applies to all travel outside Canada rather than to specific destinations. But the practical effect is that Edmonton students won't be crossing into the United States on a school trip this year, in a year when the Canada-US relationship has deteriorated sharply and counter-tariffs take effect on September 8.
The board hasn't linked the two, and nothing in the superintendent's letter mentions it.
EPS has done this twice before
This is the third time in eleven years, and both previous pauses ended.
In November 2015, after the Paris attacks, Edmonton Public put all international student trips on hold over terrorism concerns. "For the present and foreseeable future, all international field trips are on hold," spokesperson Brad Stromberg said at the time. The Calgary Board of Education did the same, and both Edmonton and Calgary Catholic cancelled their trips outright.
Within weeks, Edmonton Public shifted to evaluating trips case by case.
That episode also produced the best available number for what's at stake. On average, about 1,500 Edmonton Public students go on international trips each year. At the time of the 2015 pause, 1,350 students were slated to travel before the end of that school year.
In January 2020, the board cancelled all field trips to China over the emerging coronavirus outbreak, affecting five trips.
Then-federal public safety minister Ralph Goodale pushed back on the 2015 cancellations, saying he knew of no reason boards should cancel trips over terrorism fears, while acknowledging the decision belonged to educators.
Other boards are handling it differently
Edmonton Public went further than most.
The Vancouver School Board and the Calgary Catholic School District are both approving field trips on a case-by-case basis rather than cancelling outright.
"We are operating within an evolving global context and are carefully considering a range of factors in our review processes," the Vancouver board said.
Thousands of students across Canada have had trips cancelled or modified for this year.
What happens to the money
The board hasn't publicly detailed how deposits and payments are being handled.
In 2015, when EPS and the CBE paused trip planning, both said they would stop cashing cheques and collecting fees related to future international trips.
If your child had a trip booked, ask the school directly about refunds, and check whether any travel insurance purchased for the trip covers cancellation by the organizer rather than by the traveller. Those are different things and the distinction matters.
Tour operators that specialize in school travel often hold deposits as credit rather than refunding, and a board-level cancellation may or may not trigger a refund clause depending on the contract.
What a board actually weighs before a trip
Field trip approval isn't a single yes or no, and understanding the process explains why a blanket cancellation is unusual.
School divisions generally assess international travel against Global Affairs Canada travel advisories, which run on four levels: take normal precautions, exercise a high degree of caution, avoid non-essential travel, and avoid all travel. Most boards won't approve a trip to a destination at the top two levels, and insurers often won't cover one.
Beyond the advisory, boards weigh supervision ratios, medical access at the destination, evacuation planning, whether staff can be reached around the clock, and whether the division can get students home if something changes mid-trip.
What's still not clear
Which country the civil unrest incident happened in, and what the students experienced.
Whether out-of-province trips within Canada are affected. In 2015, EPS and the CBE explicitly excluded domestic travel and only paused international trips. The board hasn't said whether that holds this time.
How many students and how many trips are affected this year.
Whether exchange students already scheduled to come to Edmonton are affected, given that school-based exchanges are included in the cancellation.
Sources
Edmonton Public Schools superintendent's letter to parents, June 2026
Comments from Zoe Cogger and Superintendent Thompson, and the Vancouver and Calgary Catholic responses, as reported by The Canadian Press. The 2015 and 2020 cancellations and the 1,500-student figure as reported by Global News.
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