Public Schools Increasing Fees to Balance Budgets, Journal Sentinel Reports
Following are excerpts from an article that appeared in the June 12,
2000, issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was written by Journal
Sentinel staff writer Anne Davis. The complete article can be found on
the
newspaper's Web site.
With school districts throughout the state ratcheting up fees to compensate
for the double whammy of declining enrollments and revenue caps, free
public education is becoming a pricey proposition.
Parents are being asked to pick up more of the tab for everything from
driver education to field trips.
Consider these examples from recent debates over districts' 2000-'01
budgets:
- To help plug a $3 million gap between revenue and expenses, the Waukesha
School District instituted a new $60-per-sport fee for high school students.
- Faced with a $500,000 shortfall in revenue, the West Bend School District
raised high school registration fees by 10%, to $55 per student from
$50. The high school athletic fee went from $30 per sport to $40.
- In Mequon-Thiensville, one of the wealthiest districts in the state,
officials recommended charging high school students $35 per extracurricular
activity. Previously, students paid a flat fee of $35 no matter how
many activities they participated in. Superintendent John Box has also
recommended dropping the district's driver education program because
a proposed $375 fee is "excessive."
Although increases in individual fees are often small, the money quickly
adds up for parents with more than one child in school. Compounding the
problem is a rising number of "unofficial" fees.
"I'm stunned by this," said Laureen Lehnberg of Cedarburg,
who forked out $200 in just two months this spring to pay for field trips,
T-shirts and class projects for the two oldest of her four children.
The almost daily requests for $5 here and $7 there came on top of the
fees she paid just to register her children last fall.
With her oldest child starting high school this fall, the situation will
only get worse. It costs $52 to register at Cedarburg High School and
$35 more to participate in just one sport or extracurricular activity.
After the School Board increased the fee by $100 effective in the 2000-'01
school year, it will cost $305 to learn to drive.
. . .
"Fees are not an acceptable way to pay for the programs that communities
believe are important," said Greg Doyle, spokesman for the state
Department of Public Instruction. "They create an inequity, particularly
for students who come from disadvantaged families."
Concerns over increasing fees prompted the Department of Public Instruction
to post an advisory
on its Web site, outlining the fees that districts can legally charge.
Districts may not charge parents for required courses or classes counted
toward graduation. However, schools collect a growing number of so-called
user fees for athletics and extracurricular activities, as well as for
courses in art, music and technology.
Although not a required course, driver education taken through the public
schools has long been a more affordable option than private instruction
for many parents. Now, in an effort to make the programs self-supporting,
districts are charging fees that rival or surpass those of private driving
schools.
Doyle said 36 Wisconsin school districts that have high schools do not
offer driver education, compared with 26 five years ago. In the same period,
the number of districts charging more than $200 for the program has jumped
from one to seven.
The rising costs will probably prevent many less-wealthy students and
those without access to private instruction from learning to drive, Doyle
said - even though recently passed state laws mandate more rigorous preparation
for young drivers.
"We know other fees are climbing as well. This is an area that concerns
us very much," Doyle said. "We seem to be kind of tiptoeing
around the issue of the cost of public education and what we need to do
is face it."
The Wisconsin Congress of Parents and Teachers is also concerned about
rising fees.
"This comes up all the time," said Winnie Doxsie, the group's
president. "When we're looking at a public education that's free,
the more we make it not free, the more it puts kids at a disadvantage."
In addition, her group is concerned about the increasing trend of asking
parent-teacher organizations to pay for equipment, field trips and other
items that used to come out of district budgets, Doxsie said.
. . .
Cedarburg School Board member Danette Carlton, who has two children at
Westlawn Elementary School, said she thinks many parents have had enough.
"This year at Westlawn, I've had numerous parents say to me, 'What's
with all this money?' " Carlton said.
"I think there will be a parent uprising with parents saying, 'This
is a public education.' "
Posted June 12, 2000