When we moved here last August and registered my son for middle school, we were surprised to find out there was a yearly fee for the school bus (several hundred dollars). Now he’s in high school and taking a Theater Arts class. We got a permission form to sign and found out that if he gets an acting role in a play, or if he is stage manager or a couple of other roles, that there is a $200 “activity fee” that he has to pay. It seems like punishing the parents for having kids that want to succeed. The bus fee I totally get. In this economy it’s understandable. But the activity fee for being in a play at school just seems a bit much. And that’s a subsidized fee! The full fee is over $300!
At our school, there is an activity fee that covers anything you do - but you only pay it if you do something. My boys are into athletics, but one fee covers all three seasons (fall, winter, spring), and would cover plays, etc if they were in to that scene.
That does seem really high, but as someone who coordinates school activities (high school debate), maybe I can toss in my two cents here.
What has happened in the last year or two in our local high school district is that the district has basically cut everything. Things that were covered before just ain’t covered anymore. For example: we hold debate tournaments (so all the high schools in town come to one school to compete against one another) on Saturdays. Previously, the only cost the host team incurred was the cost of food that was then resold for a profit for their program (to pay for scholarships and such). Each entrant in the tournament paid $5 and that covered things like our computers, ballots, blah blah blah (and each program pays for that, generally, not the kids. I only made my kids pay if they dropped out at the last minute). Easy enough, right?
Then, in the last year or two, this all changed. Suddenly, school host sites were demanding we (the debate league) pay for: security for the whole day (and because it’s Saturday, the security folks are making time and a half), a facility rental fee to use the campus itself (I’ve seen it as low as $200 and as high as $1000), and two janitors for the whole day (who are making time and a half for a Saturday). Now, just in case you don’t know: a debate tournament can very easily go 15 hours.
Our league has worked our butts off to not pass this cost onto kids, but it keeps getting worse and worse. If it got to the point where we charged $200 to a kid for the luxury of debating, I assure you that there would be no more high school debate.
Not being a parent I have no pup in this fight. But I can see the logic of activities fees. These activities do have costs. So should the costs be borne by the people who choose to participate or should everyone pay for the activities of the few?
Well, the thing is I wonder how much of those costs is necessary. When I was in drama in high school we had an annual budget of $200 from the school that had to cover everything. Then we also had ticket sales. And we made it work. Granted those were late-'80s dollars, but even adjusted for inflation it isn’t $200/kid worth of difference. We re-used a lot of things, we made costumes out of cheap fabric, bought things at thrift stores, borrowed things temporarily, etc.
The only problem I have with it is that as the schools cut their budgets more and more, things that used to just be classes (art and music, for example) become “activities” in which a student can’t participate without paying the fee. So then a kid’s education becomes dependent on their family’s ability to pay, which seems to kind of go against the idea of having public schools in the first place.
I guarantee you the price isn’t to cover the cost of costumes and such. Rather, I’m willing to bet that the situation is like mine— the school is charging them for facilities, janitors, security, etc.
Now, I’m not suggesting $200 a kid is necessarily reasonable, but there ya go.
For comparison, when I coached at a private school (where parents paid $10k a year for their kids just to attend the school in the first place), I was expected to put the cost of traveling to invitationals on the kids. So, if they wanted to go (it was about 5 times a year), I charged them anywhere from $200-$300 per time. This was to cover travel costs and entry fees. Parents still had to give kids money for food and such. Craziness. What I talked about before were the costs of hosting in town, which is comparable to hosting a play, I imagine.
I went through a MA public school system (Lexington, for the record) and this is very regular. I remember my parents getting hit with bus fees way back in the 90s. They promptly cancelled and dropped my sister off at elementary school…I was already in middle school and we lived within walking distance of that and LHS.
My parents poured thousands into the public school programs in the mid-90s, and this is even while living in one of the most upscale public school systems in the state. Lexington has one of the cross-examination best debate teams in the country, travels nationally, and both my sister and I made it on. It was something like $1500-$2000 “suggested donations” per child to participate even back then. The team had 30 members (you had to be chosen to be on past the first year), which basically meant they had something like a $60,000 budget at the time from parental contributions alone (they also got more from the school).
Of course it’s a crapton of money, that’s how the schools build well-known programs. Then again, my brother-in-law went to Andover and it makes my high school look positively pauperish in comparison.
Talk to the instructor. You might be able to work a deal where instead of paying $200 you donate the old end table and lamp you have in your garage and donate double batches of cookies for bake sales or something. A lot of the fees they are collecting are going to buy things like paint, costumes, furniture, etc. and they might be more than willing to waive the fee if you can provide them with some of the things that they had intended to buy with that money.
Well, IMO they shouldn’t. When my kids were selling stuff for school, I’d buy whatever the minimum was and tell them to leave the neighbors alone. I’d then give the crap away.
I was under the impression that door-to-door selling was being discouraged these days because we are more fearful of unknown evil monstors lurking in various suburban shrubbery waiting to abduct children…
It should be noted that there is a world of difference between a competitive league debate team and a competitive circuit debate team. You went to a circuit school, which is a whole different world. $2000 per person for a circuit school really isn’t bad at all- I’ve heard it go well into 10k+ for kids to compete in programs like that now. Hence the whole debate (ha!) about competitive (circuit) forensics being inaccessible to poorer schools (check out the documentary Resolved for more insight on this).
Five years ago, when my youngest kid was still in school, the Gate parent group had some evening activities for kids across the district. Back then we didn’t have to pay for janitor service and such because we were a district activity, but we would have if we weren’t connected. We also had to be done during regular janitorial hours. Today I bet we would have had to pay anyhow, which would have made it unaffordable.
40 years ago when I was in high school and on the debate team not only didn’t we have to pay for normal events, but we all got to go to a special debate clinic at Hunter College for just the price of a subway ride.
We moved from New Jersey to California, so we were especially sensitive to all the fees that showed up.
There’s probably a lot of different factors that add up. Is this theater class scheduled after regular school hours? If so, the school is paying for utilities and employees beyond their regular schedule. The school’s insurance policy probably only covers routine classroom activities - any out-of-class programs likes sports or theatre classes are going to require extra coverage. Is there any travel involved? More extra insurance plus gas and a driver’s overtime. It’s these invisible costs, not costumes and sets, that are costing money.
I agree with you in principle. We need to fund schools and I’m saying that as a non-parent. But school administrations have to deal with the reality of limited budgets. They have to pay basic overhead first to keep the school open, then pay for the basics of an education, and then use whatever’s left to pay for more marginal activities like arts and sports.