Back to school: Shaky economy hits kids

Hard times and higher fuel prices will follow kids back to school this fall.

Children will walk farther to the bus stop, pay more for lunch, study from old textbooks and wear last year's clothes. Field trips? Forget about it.

This year, it could cost nearly twice as much to fuel the yellow buses that rumble to school each morning. If you think it's expensive to fill up a sport utility vehicle, try topping off a tank that is two or even three times as big.

At the same time, costs for air conditioning and heating, cafeteria food and classroom supplies are mounting, all because of the shaky economy. And parents have their own tanks to fill.

The extra costs present a tricky math problem: Where can schools subtract to keep costs under control?

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In rural Minnesota, one district is skipping classes every Monday to save fuel. On the other days, classes will be about 10 minutes longer.

"I think it's a great opportunity," said Candice Jaenisch, whose two sons and daughter will be making the switch. "You're cutting expenses that really don't affect school."

The other option for the district — MACCRAY, an acronym for Maynard, Clara City and Raymond — was to start cutting electives. A shorter week will save at least $65,000 in fuel, superintendent Greg Schmidt said.

There is still a cost. Kids will have to stay awake and alert later in the day, and some parents will need to find day care on Mondays. But it's a small district, with 700 students, and many parents are self-employed with jobs in farming or construction.

"I really don't know that there are that many people with set hours Monday through Friday," Jaenisch said.

Nationwide, at least 14 other districts are switching to four-day weeks, and dozens more are considering it, according to a recent survey by the American Association of School Administrators.

About 100 districts made the switch years ago, in many cases because of the 1970s oil crisis.

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Parents have been cutting back all summer. For back-to-school clothes, Heidi McLean shopped at outlets and the Marshalls discount chain for her son and daughter, high school students in Eureka, Calif.

"But this year, I'm forcing the kids to reuse their backpacks," McLean said. "They each cost $50. They like the special cool ones, and they're still holding up."

Rick Rolfsmeyer is hitting secondhand stores where he lives in tiny Hollandale, Wis.

"I've got two teenage boys and they like the brand names," he said. "They shan't expect that this year. We're a cheap bunch here at this house, anyway."

Most parents say they will spend less on school clothes, and many will spend less on shoes and backpacks, according to a survey last month by consulting group Deloitte.

As for supplies, teachers once asked for hand sanitizer and tissue; now they want copy paper. Lenelle Cruse, the state PTA president in Florida, said last year's budget was so tight, a Jacksonville school actually had a toilet paper drive.

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Parents are being asked to do more even as they try to cut back.

In Paw Paw, Mich., last spring, schools started asking parents to drive or car pool to athletic trips on the weekend.

In Waterford, Conn., parents might have to pay for annual trips to New York or Boston. The school's bus contract includes field trips, but not to locations two hours away, said school superintendent Randall Collins.

Now, instead of visiting Revolutionary War landmarks in each city, students will probably visit nearby Hartford to see the Connecticut Capitol or the Mark Twain house.

Nearly half of the schools in the school administrators' survey said they are curtailing field trips.

Montgomery County, Md., is cutting funds for its award-winning mathematics team. The district will still pay the coach's stipend, but parents will have to step in.

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In Jacksonville, school lunch prices will rise from $1.45 to $2 for secondary schools. "It's a huge jump," said LaTasha Green-Cobb, whose sons are in the seventh and eighth grade.

As fuel prices have rocketed higher, the cost of food has zoomed, especially for lunch-tray staples like milk. As a result, most schools will charge more for lunch, the School Nutrition Association said.

Schools will still not break even. More than half of all school children in this country get free and reduced-price lunches, and the government reimbursement is often not enough to cover the cost.

As the cost rises, nutritional quality goes down. It is not cheap to follow federal guidelines for healthy eating; fresh fruits and veggies and whole grains can cost several pennies more per meal.

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Districts are trying hard to squeeze every drop of savings from buses and through energy conservation to avoid more drastic cuts in sports, activities or even classes. Schools are also cutting staff, in most cases eliminating positions that are vacant.

In Montgomery County and elsewhere, they are holding off on ordering new textbooks.

In places where districts charge for bus service, such as San Jose, Calif., parents will have to pay more. Hundreds of districts are cutting or consolidating bus routes, expanding the distance students must walk.

In Oxford, Ala., the bus has always made stops at every house. But this year, students in fifth through 12th grades will have to walk to neighborhood bus stops.

South Carolina expects to spend nearly $11 million meant for new buses on fuel instead — in a state where the average school bus is 12 years old and some are 22.

In California's Folsom Cordova district, there will be no high school buses this year.

Smaller, more rural districts require smaller measures: Paw Paw, Mich., is moving to all-day kindergarten, eliminating eight bus runs in the middle of the day.

Schools are also getting creative with computerized bus routes and heating and cooling systems. Montgomery County, the sprawling district that serves the Washington, D.C. suburbs, has a master control room straight out of NASA that lets one person regulate the temperature in every single classroom.

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All these cutbacks may seem tough, but to economist Brian Bethune at the private forecasting firm Global Insight, it's about time.

Only about half the country's 50 million school kids ride the bus to school. Some walk or ride bikes, but plenty ride to school in a car with their parents. In an era of high gas prices with no end in sight, Bethune says people must change.

"I think if parents are going to drive their kids to school and not use bus service that's already available, that creates problems," Bethune said. "Those choices have to be revisited, just like everywhere else."

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