Would Montana Parents Really Pay This Much For Student Time Off?

A California school district has recently started making parents pay a "donation" to the school if their kids take a day off of school for any reason, including sick days and vacation time. I think it seems outrageous that a school would penalize parents if their child was sick, or went on a family vacation. However, a survey done by FamilyDestinationsGuide.com reveals that Montanans may be willing to pay more than you think for their children.

What does it cost per day for a kid to go to school?

According to the Manhattan Beach School District in California, they charge parents $47 per day that their child misses school. This seems quite ridiculous to me. In an email from Cherry Digital, 95% of parents would agree with me and not want to pay anything at all for taking their kid out of school.

However, what about inflation? It's extremely expensive to take a vacation nowadays. But, it is cheaper to do so outside of the summer when there are fewer people trying to do so. Knowing that, would it change parents' minds to pay a little extra to go on vacation during the school year rather than pay more during the summer?

Parents would pay over a thousand dollars on student time off.

Family Destinations Guide surveyed over 3,000 parents across the country to find out what they would pay given the circumstances above. According to that survey and the interactive map on their website, Montana parents would pay an average of $584.67 to take their child on vacation during the school year.

That ranks low on the spectrum, however, as states such as Massachusetts, Washington, North, and South Dakota would pay as much as $1,338 to their school district just to take their child on vacation. If you ask me, that just seems outlandish. However, it's all theoretical. Except for the Manhattan Beach School District in California, of course.

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Vacations don't need to be any more expensive than they already are. Let's just stick to the rising airplane ticket costs first.

LOOK: 14 Places to Visit With Direct Flights From Billings

While people in Montana may find it hard to travel anywhere from Billings because it usually requires flights with multiples stops, we found great opportunities just in the cities where Billings flies direct.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

Source: Would Montana Parents Really Pay This Much For Student Time Off?