The Honolulu Zoo is under fire over the entrance fee it charges students on school field trips.
After years of paying $1, some, but not all, students are now being charged more.
"They said that it was $1 and $4 for the parent chaperones that wanted to come with us. Then when they found out that I was from a private school they said the fee was actually $4 a student, and $8 for the parents," said Rita Bechtelheimer, a teacher from Waolani Judd Nazarene.
That's the daily kamaaina rate.
It used to be that all schools were charged $1 for students on a field trip, and $4 for adults. That subsidy has been removed, but not for all.
"And I proposed to him that we needed to be at least a little sensitive to the children with the least fiscal, financial resources, which would probably be costed out of being able to come and visit the zoo," said Honolulu Zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo.
So public school students continue to pay just a dollar, with their parents paying four dollars. It's four times that amount for private school students and twice that for their parents.
"What I did was I actually told them that I didn't think that was fair when I realized there was a difference between the public and the private," Bechtelheimer said.
The new fees started on July 1 of last year, as a way for the zoo to generate more revenues.
"And of course you know times are tough so you realize that a fee is one thing, but to discriminate between public and private, that just really doesn't seem fair," she said.
"And we have parents (say) that it's a real sacrifice to send their children here. So to have to pay huge excursion fees on top of that really limits what we can do with them."
"Well I still feel that the zoo is a wonderful bargain for what we're charging. But yes, it did concern me that we would probably lose some school groups," Mollinedo said.
