[mrnoble]

Sounds like different schools and districts have widely diverging policies. Ours didn't have any specific requirements for gender of staff members and I'm very glad, although we had female staff and parent chaperones on all our trips. Going out of town is always tricky, my experience over the years has streamlined the planning. If any advice can apply through different requirements in different schools, my advice is: take care of the planning for your trips in the early fall. Don't wait until February to find out what the policies are, and then scramble to make it work.