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Spiking gas prices may limit education choice


(FILE - AP Photo/Iris Samuels)
(FILE - AP Photo/Iris Samuels)
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As gas prices soar at the pumps it is forcing some parents to make difficult choices. Our Crisis In The Classroom team has discovered that gas prices may put some students at a disadvantage.

Grace Ellis is a junior at Roots Charter School in West Valley City. She and her family picked the publicly funded school to help her thrive.

However, with gas prices reaching historic highs, Grace and her mom Annie said if it weren’t for a free light rail pass, going to Roots would not be an option.

“It would be really tricky to make that happen for her,” says Annie.

Grace and many of her fellow classmates enrolled at Roots because they were struggling in a traditional public-school environment.

In public schools across Utah and the country, students usually attend the school in their neighborhood. In Utah and many other states, parents have school choice, meaning they can go to another public school or public charter school if they think it will serve their needs better.

In some cases, those students and their parents may have to travel a long way to get to the chosen school.

Roots provides all its students with a free TRAX pass. That costs the school about $40,000 a year.

Grace’s family, for example, lives in Lehi, and would have to drive 35 minutes to get to Roots.

Roots founder Tyler Bastian says most of Roots families are not rich, and with gas prices on the rise, some kids are pulling out and attending their neighborhood school or just not coming at all.

“We're seeing it in attendance and were seeing it in just how often kids just don't get here,” says Bastian.

At Providence Hall Charter School, they have a small fleet of 6 buses. They use them to help transport students for sports and extracurricular activities.

However, they also utilize the buses to help get many of their students to and from school.

The school does charge parents who chose to use the service $60 a term, but the surcharge is not enough to cover the school’s transportation budget.

“It’s all self-funded,” says Providence Hall’s Nate Marshall.

Royce Van Tassell of the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools points out that while the legislature gives money to traditional public schools to help supplement their transportation budgets, nearly no tax dollars go to help charter schools get their students around.

“Those dollars should be going to what happens inside that classroom not getting kids to that classroom,” says Van Tassell.

Annie Ellis is proud of her daughter, Grace, and how Roots has motivated her to succeed. However, she doesn’t want to see inflation cause Grace’s classmates to run out of gas.

“Anything that would hurt Roots and their ability to have students come would be really unfortunate,” says Ellis.

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