The School Board will host a public forum Dec. 18 on a proposal to increase drivers’ education fees by $100 for next year.

District 94 currently charges students $200 for its various courses, which include in-school, before and after school and summer programs.

The forum will focus on the district’s proposal to ask for a waiver from state laws limiting program fees. The district will also ask for waiver from a new law that prohibits counting simulators as required behind-the-wheel hours. Dan Johnson, division head of the Drivers’ Education program, said discontinuing the use of simulators would reduce the number of students the program could instruct from 240 per year to about 140.

“That really puts us in a bigger bind,” Johnson said.

State law currently requires six hours of behind the wheel instruction, but allows districts to replace some of the hours with simulated driving. Each hour not spent behind the wheel must be replaced by four hours of simulation. Johnson said students typically spend about three hours actually driving and 12 hours using the simulators.

“We try to do as much driving as we can and supplement it with the simulators,” Johnson said.

But a new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, will prohibit the using simulators in place of actual driving hours. Superintendent Lee Rieck said he plans to submit two waiver requests, one asking to be exempt from both the simulator ban and the fee cap, and one asking for only a fee waiver in case the first is denied.

State law prohibits the district from charging more that $50 for a driver’s education program, but the district, like most others, has continually sought and received a waiver from the law. Its current five-year waiver expires at the end of the year.

The district spent an average of $653.28 per student on drivers’ education courses last year, Rieck said. The high cost is due mostly to the low student-to-teacher ratio, which is less than 11-to-1.

Although the district’s fees already surpass state law, Rieck said the cost is still far below private companies, which generally charge between $500 and $600, and is average compared to other districts in the area.