Relief from school fees at least a year away for Utah families

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — As children across Utah head back to class, their parents find themselves trying to cover the cost of school fees.

 

For years, KSL TV has been reporting on those fees and their impact on Utahns struggling to make ends meet.

Lawmakers have been eyeing a fix for a while now, and recently, they approved one. But it won’t help families for at least another year.

‘We were shocked’ by school fees 

Mario and Adriana Arras have a daughter who just started attending Murray High School. Like many families, they set up a back-to-school budget.

But the couple quickly realized their budget wasn’t going to work as planned – because of school fees.

“When we saw those fees, we were shocked, quite honestly,” Mario Arras told KSL TV.

Adriana Arras said it cost over $500 for her daughter’s core and elective classes.

“Even though we had fees last year” for junior high, she said, “it just did not compare.”

Lawmakers approve school fee fix

Families throughout Utah face school fees every year. For the last few years, state lawmakers have tried reining them in.

“We’re working to really find the right solution to this,” Sen. Ann Millner, R-Ogden, said.

Millner was one of the sponsors of HB415 last session, which gets rid of curricular fees associated with classes students have to take.

The bill passed and was signed by Gov. Spencer Cox. But it doesn’t take effect until next school year.

“We still had gray areas we needed to clarify,” Millner said, such as how to pay for co-curricular activities that are part of a course or program but happen outside school hours.

Continue reading on ksltv.com.

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