POCATELLO — Mary Reichman said the current ski season at Pebble Creek Ski Area has been a good one with plenty of snow early on and regular storms that have kept depths at about 5 feet at the top of the mountain and 24 inches at the lodge.

    But as nice of a season as its been, Reichman said there was one thing that was missing that was a regular part of the ski season for well over two decades — middle school students from District 25.

    “The schools have been coming up here for at least 25 years,” she said.

    But that wasn’t the case this year. Reichman said she was given several reasons by the district for their discontinuing the program, including the rising cost of fuel in transporting the students, the cost of the program itself being prohibitive for some students and the need for those days spent at Pebble Creek to be spent in the classroom.

    “We saw this as being a very sudden decision,” Reichman said. “All of their dates (to ski) had been set.”

    In fact, those seventh-graders who were planning to participate in the ski program from Franklin Middle School had already been given their preparatory instructions from Pebble Creek employees when they were told in December that the program had been canceled.

    Reichman said that during the winter break she ran into a teacher from one of the other District 25 middle schools who was under the impression the program was still going forward. She said parents of some of those kids, who were slated to participate in the program, also expressed their disappointment to her.

    “I think the decision was made very quickly,” she said.

    District 25 spokeswoman Shelley Allen, said the program was canceled for several reasons, adding that the district has no plans to bring it back.

    Allen said that among the reasons for the cut was the fact that the district was no longer able to pay for the program. Even with that, she said the district was willing to give those students a release day to participate if the teachers could coordinate transportation and the kids could pay their way.

    Reichman said the cost to participate in the program is $8 for the lift ticket, and an additional dollar for those who need to rent equipment.

    Ultimately, Allen said, only a small portion of the seventh-graders, about one-third, would have been able to participate in the program under the new option. That meant two-thirds of the students would still be in class for a full day.

    “It ended up being a (potential) disruption to a full learning day for a third of the kids,” Allen said.

    The next suggestion the district made was for those students at Hawthorne and Irving middle schools, to either participate with Franklin’s ski club, which is funded through the parents and students, or form their own ski club. This would allow them to go to Pebble Creek as a group outside of school hours.

    That, Allen said, is also the future of District 25 middle school students skiing at Pebble Creek as a group.

    “The schools can form a club of their own, or they can join Franklin’s club, and they can do it as a club,” she said.

    Reichman says she’s not down on District 25. Quite the contrary. She’s enjoyed the years that the district has sent its students to Pebble Creek though a formal ski program. She says it exposes the students to a sport they can take full advantage of in their own backyard.

    What Reichman hopes for is a solution that finds a substantial number of District 25 seventh-graders back on the slopes at Pebble Creek next season.

    “I think the biggest loss is the kids learning a life-time sport, something they can enjoy into their later years,” she said. “At this point, I just want to know what we need to do to get the program back in place. It would be nice to have some sort of avenue for open discussion involving teachers and parents.”