Sunset Elementary fifth-graders brave cold stream water to search for macroinvertibrates during an outdoor school lesson at Kiwanis Kamp above Mission in 2012.

In about two weeks, fifth-graders in the Hermiston School District will load up on buses with backpacks, bug repellent and sunscreen for outdoor school, an overnight, educational field trip into the mountains.

Outdoor School was revitalized in the Hermiston School District about 10 years ago, but this year, the longstanding program will celebrate some big changes: a new location, and, in the fall, the pilot of a new season for outdoor school.

Since its revitalization, outdoor school has taken place at Kiwanis Cabins on the north fork of the Umatilla River, but next month, the students will head to Meadowood Springs, according to Bryn Browning, Hermiston assistant superintendent.

The location move for outdoor school boils down to a common challenge for the Hermiston School District: enrollment. The Hermiston School District had about 475 students enrolled as of Tuesday. Each elementary school will send fifth-graders to outdoor school as a group; the smallest of Hermiston’s fifth-grade classes, 75 students, is at Highland Hills. In addition to the students, all fifth-grade teachers and elementary principals will join the class at outdoor school, along with 20 high school counselors and multiple volunteers.

“The biggest reason for changing locations is with our student growth, we have simply outgrown Kiwanis Cabins,” Browning said, adding students have stayed a mile away from the main camp, requiring busing in for the daytime activities. “One of the things that we’re excited about with Meadowood is it’s a different kind of space. Meadowood has a meadow, a larger pond for kayaking and paddleboats, a ropes and obstacle course built-in, trails built-in.”

This year’s fifth-graders could be the only class to attend Meadowood in the spring, however, as the district is also presenting a pilot program to move outdoor school from May to September. Like enrollment, the primary reason for the second change is also based on something uncontrollable — the weather.

“We’re very lucky this year that there isn’t snow at the time we want to go,” Browning said. “We’ve had outdoor school with snow one year and then the next year it was 90 degrees at the same week.”

Three years ago, massive snow melt also wiped out the road to Kiwanis Cabin three weeks before the camp began.

Moving outdoor school to the fall also frees time in the spring for the fifth-graders, who must juggle state testing, college introduction programs and readiness activities for the move to middle school. To help students be ready for outdoor school at the earlier time frame, the district is considering swapping the science curriculums for fourth and fifth graders. Currently, the fourth-grade science curriculum focuses on earth materials, ideas and inventions while the fifth-grade program focuses on water and the planet. Switching the programs will give students a base understanding before attending outdoor school while still providing experiences applicable to the “earth materials” unit.

The district does not charge students any additional fees to participate in outdoor school, and the trip is open to all district fifth-graders. After rentals, transportation, fees and supplies, outdoor school costs the Hermiston School District about $30,000 a year.

“Outdoor school is one of those programs that we’re really lucky to have in the Hermiston School District because we don’t receive anything from the state for it, and we don’t charge the kids for it,” Browning said. “Some of these kids have never been into the mountains before. This is putting into practice everything they learn in a classroom. They’re in rubber boots wading in the creek, they’re actually seeing animal tracks and the different types of mosses on trees. All the things they’ve been learning, they get to see it. It’s an amazing opportunity.”