Driving a vanful of kids on a field trip used to be an insignificant expense. Suzy McMurtrey considered the cost of gas a small donation to her son's school.
Now that filling up her Mercury Villager costs $60, however, the economy of field trips is changing. When the Carmichael mom took six kids to Amador County last month for a visit to the Black Chasm Caverns, the students in her van each handed her a few dollars.
"The teacher had told the kids to bring money for gas," she said. "I wasn't expecting it at all, but I was certainly grateful."
The long arm of the economy has reached into the region's schools – and it extends far beyond the budget cuts districts are imposing in response to the state government's fiscal crisis.
The financial problems families are experiencing are affecting everything from whether parents drive on field trips to how much money they donate at school fundraisers and which school children attend when their parents lose the family home. In addition, the rising costs school systems face for staples such as gas and food are having impacts of their own.
Schools in wealthy and poor neighborhoods alike are feeling the economy's pinch.
At Del Dayo Elementary in Carmichael, where more than 80 percent of parents have graduated from college, fundraising is harder than it's been in the past, said parent Joy Wake. Businesses typically donate items for the school's annual dinner auction, she said, but fewer of them have been willing to give as much this year.
"They're saying, 'Look, people aren't eating out much – we can't donate a gift certificate,'" Wake said.
And families have less to spend at the auction than they did in previous years. Last year, 300 people attended the spring function – paying $90 per couple. This year, 200 came to the event. The dinner auction raised $63,000 – down about a third from last year's $95,000.
"We realize we're pretty lucky to have the parents and the fundraising base that we have," Wake said.
But the drop in revenue from the fundraiser means the school will have less money to spend on its library and technology programs.
In poor neighborhoods, school enrollment is fluctuating as families face unemployment and home foreclosures.
"I'm seeing a lot of families displaced," said Ramona Bishop, superintendent of Del Paso Heights schools, where 96 percent of children receive subsidized meals. "We have kids being marked homeless because they are living with others – aunts, uncles, grandfathers."
Enrollment overall hasn't dropped, Bishop said, because as some families leave Del Paso Heights to stay with relatives elsewhere, others are moving into the neighborhood in search of temporary shelter.
With the hardship many of her students are facing, Bishop decided Del Paso schools must start serving larger and healthier meals. School breakfasts and lunches are now prepared with more carbs, more fat and more vitamins "so this food will stick to our students' bones," Bishop said.
"At least when they go home they'll have had two really healthy meals," she said. "In case they're not fed at home, they'll be able to make it until breakfast the next morning."
The heartier meals cost the school district more, but Bishop said it's money worth spending.
The Elk Grove Unified School District has changed its cafeteria menu, too – not because of hungry students, but because of the rising price of food. Next year the district will pay twice as much for flour and 30 percent more for milk than it did this year.
In response, Elk Grove cafeterias have been cutting back on pricey menu items and replacing them with more economical entrees. That means kids are eating more bean burritos and popcorn chicken – and fewer beef enchiladas and popcorn shrimp. Bagel dogs are out; corn dogs are in.
Skyrocketing fuel costs are prompting other kinds of cutbacks at some schools. Roseville high schools are limiting how far they'll bus student athletes to away games and how far classes can travel for field trips.
Private schools are also seeing some changes with the downturn in the economy. Several in the Sacramento region reported a slight drop in the number of applicants for next year and a small increase in the number of requests for financial aid.
"We know that some of our parents who are in development or home construction or sales, we know they've experienced significant downturns in their income," said Stephen Repsher, headmaster of Sacramento Country Day School, where tuition is around $16,000 a year.
On the upside, the collapse of the real estate market has allowed high school economics teachers to spice up classroom theory with examples from real life. Tim Griffin recently led his McClatchy High School students through a lesson on interest rates and the Federal Reserve. The class looked at the historic correlation between home sales and mortgage rates.
"Being at the epicenter of the mortgage crisis, this is something you can tell the kids to look out for," Griffin said, "all the foreclosure signs, or that house you pass on the way to school that's been on the market forever."
Call The Bee's Laurel Rosenhall, (916) 321-1083.
