It isn’t a secret that the Lewis-Palmer School District has recently made students’ bus rides to and from school a pricey privilege and not an assumed right. Charging fifty cents per ride for each student is supposed to offset around 24% of the regular cost of transportation within the district.

Now, I can understand charging to ride a bus. I realize that the district is really hurting economically and that they will take any steps they can to reduce their spending. They’re even being nice enough to offer free bus services for students who may not be able to afford the fifty cent fee, so they’re not being overall unfair.

I get it. Really, I do.

However, the thing I can’t stand is not having any bus services at all. Starting with the 2011-12 school year, multiple bus routes were cancelled altogether. In Woodmoor, where I live, I was basically told, “Sucks for you. You don’t get the option to ride the bus anymore because we’re cutting your route to save money.”

Now, how is that fair? I was a high school sophomore who had just been bestowed with the honor of having a driver’s license. I didn’t have my own car, and I had neighbors my age that couldn’t even drive at all. My parents worked and couldn’t take me to school, or pick me up at the end of the day. How was I supposed to get to school?

Sure, I could’ve walked. I mean, people walk much longer than two miles to get to school every day. But do they walk in inclement weather? Do they walk down an icy road in the middle of a blizzard when it’s still dark and cars are sliding all around them?

Yes, part of it is me being lazy. I will openly admit that, first thing in the morning, the last thing I want to do is walk two miles in the freezing cold when it’s still pitch black out. Call me a bum, but I would much rather ride a stuffy bus.

Walking, though it was an option in dire circumstances, was almost out of the question during the winter season – purely for safety reasons.

So, what about the kids who were lucky enough to get (or inherit) a car so that they could make the trip to and from school? It would make sense that, because their bus services were cut, they would at least get a discounted parking permit. You’d think they would at least get something after being denied the option to ride a bus.

That’s not how it is in our school district. We got absolutely nothing in return, and no discounts on anything at all. Apparently to the district, it doesn’t matter that students’ parents’ property taxes are supposed to assist in paying for their bus service. They don’t care that essentially, parents are paying taxes for a service that isn’t even available to their own kids.

Let’s be honest – I’m still fuming over this. Because of our district’s (dare I say it?) wasteful spending in the aspect of a new school, I’m stuck without a way to get to school unless my parents and I are willing to shell out hundreds, or thousands, of dollars to pay for my own car.

On top of that, I already pay hundreds of dollars a year just to even do anything in this school. We pay eighty dollars a year to rent an instrument, on top of a large fee to even be in the band in the first place. We pay media fees, graduation fees, transcript fees, and elementary students pay fees for classroom supplies because the district can’t even afford to provide free paper and pens to color with. And students who want to purchase a lunch at the school can pay hundreds of dollars a year for food that is mediocre at best (but that’s another topic altogether, isn’t it?).

It’s safe to say many students are irritated with how costly it’s been to get an education over these past few years. And chances are, the costs will never decrease.

For more information on the new costs students who actually have the option to ride a bus will pay, visit:http://transportation.lewispalmer.schoolfusion.us/modules/locker/files/get_group_file.phtml?gid=928942&fid=16738796&sessionid=f84468f6db506145f59d437b0f9226e0.