Transportation costs too much for 1 student

The talking heads on radio have been all over the story. A 13-year-old deaf girl from Big Lake has won a judge’s ruling that the Anchorage School District should bus her to town so she can attend school there instead of in the Valley.

The cost has been set at nearly $80,000 a year for one student to go to class and be around friends she’s known since a young age.

That’s too much money to spend on one student when school districts are always looking for ways to trim expenses. It’s a hard pill to swallow for the parents of this child. But at 13, youngsters must start learning about sacrifices. There are plenty of students who would like to go to another school. Sometimes when new schools are constructed, students are forced to separate from long-time buddies because the boundaries change.

The parents made the decision to live in Big Lake even though their child prefers to go to school in Anchorage. That’s a family choice that the Anchorage taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to fund.

Especially when there is at least one alternative to school district transportation: Mascot goes to Anchorage every morning and comes back every evening. For less than $10 a day, the student could get from near her home to the bus terminal in Anchorage where she could take a PeopleMover bus to her school, or arrange to be picked up by the Anchorage School District for far less than $80,000 a school year.

If students go to school 180 days a year, that comes to about $450 per day to transport one student. For that amount, the Anchorage School District could hire a cab and save close to $250 a day, maybe more if they could get a frequent rider rate.

It would be easy to fault the judge who made the ruling, but federal and state laws hold her to a firm standard.

This is one of those cases where common sense just did not prevail.

Nobody wants to deny that girl a chance to be happy and learn in a comfortable environment, but she’s not being denied an opportunity to learn and succeed in the Mat-Su school system where they have signers and interpreters and teach other students who are deaf or have hearing problems.

Let’s face it, this is one of those times when the public good should override individual desires.