Calgary students fly to New York despite swine flu concerns

Students from a Calgary high school flew to New York City Wednesday morning after parents voted to overturn a school district's decision to cancel the trip due to swine flu concerns.

About 300 teenagers and their parents crammed into Bishop Carroll High School on Tuesday night for an emergency meeting called by Catholic school board officials.

The school district had cancelled the five-day trip to perform at music festivals, but then allowed parents to vote on whether to go ahead with the trip. Parents voted overwhelmingly in favour of letting their children go to New York City, according to the board.

"To deny the kids of such an amazing experience would have been really heart-wrenching for all of us, and it's a hard decision to make cause these kids are the number one things in our lives," said Heather Rambow, who agreed to let her son to go on the trip.

Choir singer Kaleigh Jamieson said the last few days have been emotional for her peers. Each student paid about $2,000 for the trip, with some fundraising for the past year to meet the cost.

"Tears have been everywhere these last couple of days and now we get to go and it's awesome," she said.

The 140 students left Wednesday morning as scheduled.

On Tuesday, principal Simone Gratton said the trip was cancelled because the majority of the confirmed swine flu cases in the state were in New York City. State officials updated the number of confirmed cases to 45 on Tuesday.

"It was with great difficulty that this decision was made, but our first concern is always the safety of our students," Gratton wrote in a message posted on the southwest high school's website before parents decided to go ahead with the trip. "At the moment, we are exploring other options, such as potentially rescheduling the trip and recovering as many of the travel expenditures as possible."