Salina ? New, more stringent guidelines on using booster seats for children in Kansas motor vehicles may have an unintended consequence – on youngsters’ field trips.

The law that took effect Saturday requires children aged 4 through 7 to ride in booster seats.

School buses are exempt, but the law could affect some events involving preschoolers or others attending schools without bus transportation.

Small World Early Learning Center in Salina had already cut many of its field trips, but the new law likely will end them altogether.

“We won’t be doing them, not any more,” said Marilyn Ericson, the preschool’s director.

Instead of taking pupils to visit firefighters, police officers, dental hygienists and others in person, the school will have the professionals visit classrooms.

Other organizations are dealing with the new law in different ways. Some are having parents leave booster seats, if needed, when they drop off their children. Others borrow buses.

“We’re fortunate enough to be able to use some church buses,” said Janice Krause, principal of Salina Christian Academy.

“Some of the churches are so generous, and that’s how we take care of it.”

Karen Henderson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Child Care Center in Salina, will borrow a bus for a field trip later this month. Other times, Henderson said, parents will be required to leave booster seats if students will be transported by car.

“We would do everything we could to not keep a child from attending something,” she said.

At Salina’s YMCA, child development director Elizabeth Spencer said parents already are required to leave booster seats on field trip days. That requirement will simply change to match the new age requirements.

Kansas joined a growing number of states that have enacted such laws in recent years, driven by research showing seat belts made for adults don’t protect young children in crashes.

Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have enacted booster seat laws since 2000, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.