PORTAGE | The simulators inside Portage High School are silent, and cars aren't circling the lots at Crown Point High School this summer. They're just two in a growing number of Northwest Indiana high schools that have put the brakes on driver education courses, leaving instruction to the private sector.

Nick Byrd, one of the owners of Certified Driving School, said the company's Crown Point location has seen an increase in students since the high school decided not to offer the summer class, which had the same 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours on the road that he offers.

"We've seen an increase, especially in our summer classes," Byrd said.

John Bodeker, driver education and motorcycle safety specialist for the Indiana Department of Education, said only about half of high school students enroll in a driver education course, either public or private. That's down substantially from the 1980s, when the state provided school districts with designated dollars for driver education programs.

"At the time, almost every school had driver's ed during the day. Eventually, almost everyone went to a summer program to save money," Bodeker said.

With only 34 students served last summer, the Crown Point Community School Corp. canceled its program in March. The decision in Portage preceded that, after the projected cost of operating the program made the student fee greater than or equal to what private driving schools charge.

Last summer, 91 students enrolled in Portage High School's driver education program, at a cost of $329 each. With about 70 fewer students than expected, the district barely broke even after paying for the vehicles and instructor salaries. Another factor in the program's halt is that in 2007, the 389 gallons of gas used on the road was budgeted at $2.52 a gallon, a far cry from this summer's $4 average.

Rising fuel costs also are having an impact on what the private companies charge. Jodi Barney, one of the owners of Portage's A Licence to Drive, said when she started 15 years ago, she was averaging about $1.10 a gallon. Now with three cars filling up at least daily, she'll be raising her price by $30 to $395 in the near future.

"I tried to hold out. I thought this was going to be temporary, but it's looking like it's not," Barney said. "These gas prices are killing us. Without the gas prices, I would not have increased the price."

Byrd said Certified, which also has locations in Highland and Merrillville, also has felt the pinch from the pump.

"We raised our prices in May for the first time in three years," Byrd said. "It's hard to keep up."

Byrd said the fact that Certified picks students up at home makes the program more easily accessible, but also affects the company's cost, as it draws students from as far away as Wheatfield and Boone Grove.

One obstacle the public school programs face that some of the private operators don't is that they only need vehicles for a few weeks a year and Bodeker said it's becoming more costly for schools to lease vehicles.

"What's happened very recently and what caused Valpo to drop the program is the driver's ed cars, to get plates, now have to be titled," Bodeker said. "That's become a bigger obstacle that anything in the last few years."

Bodeker said the law requiring cars be titled long has been on the books, but the Bureau of Motor Vehicles would bypass it for public school driver education courses. With a change in the state's computer system cutting out the bypass option, now if a dealer loans or leases a car to a school system for driver education, excise tax has to be paid and when the car comes back it's no longer considered a program car, but a used vehicle.