Lack of Trimet passes at Catlin Gabel School

Catlin Gabel School’s (CGS) tuition pays for what students do at school, but not how they get there.

As an independent school, CGS has students from all over the greater Portland metro area. Despite that fact, they don’t provide students with TriMet passes.

CGS does have a school bus, but according to CGS’ website transportation page, “Passes range from $49-$98 per month with discounts for siblings.”

However, Portland Public Schools (PPS), a school district with 10 high schools, gives students free TriMet passes, and they are public schools that draw from neighborhoods near each school.

In the spring of 2018, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and the city of Portland stopped paying for metro students to ride free during the school year, but PPS picked up that slack and made a deal with TriMet.

The TriMet website reads, “High school students in the Portland Public School District can ride TriMet for free during the school year by showing their student ID.”

Maya Messinetti, a senior at Wilson High School, uses her ID on TriMet. “We do not have school buses,” she said. “TriMet has a bus stop in front of [Wilson High] School.”

Their pass program is a partnership between PPS, TriMet, and the City of Portland.

According to an Oregon Live article, TriMet has said “it has an "open offer" to work with any districts on a similar student pass partnership like the PPS arrangement.” However, this does not apply to CGS as a privately funded school.

CGS wants to provide their students with similar passes, but is struggling to do so. Kenya Sei ‘20, the CGS Upper School Student Inclusivity Coordinator, has been a member of the Catlin Gabel Student Association (CGSA) for two years. He is passionate about this issue, and is currently pursuing an answer to it.

According to Sei, CGS wants students to have TriMet passes, but they haven’t found a way to pay for them yet. It’s been a struggle between the CGSA and the financial assistance office in past years.

“Right now there’s confusion as to who is going to pay for it,” Sei said. The responsibility has been shifted from the CGSA to the financial assistance office several times, and the CGSA has even explored other options like the Office of Inclusion and Outreach.

However, there are roadblocks in all of these: the Inclusion and Outreach budget isn’t available for student use, and the financial office won’t pay for them at the moment. The CGSA doesn’t have the budget to pay for TriMet passes for all the students as most of their budget goes to student activities like clubs, Takeaway Day, and dances.

“Students need a way to come to school, and someone needs to provide this for them,” Sei said. The CGSA’s most recent plan was for a limited amount of students per month to have TriMet passes, which would be filed through the financial assistance office.

When asked to comment on the situation, Mary Jacob said, “The Financial Assistance office is happy to partner with the CGSA to provide this benefit to students with financial need. As a CGSA initiative started several years ago, they provide the funding for a limited number of passes each year and our office provides the need assessment and billing recommendations. I am happy to report that for the last three years, this process has been able to support all students who have requested Trimet passes via this CGSA program.”

There will be more meetings between the financial assistance office and the CGSA in the coming weeks.

“I think it’s really unfair [that] we won’t support you trying to get to school every day,” Sei said. “Hopefully this will all be settled by the end of the month.”