This
pay-to-play bill hits parents for kids' school
activities
Friday, August 27,
2004 • BY PHILIP READ • Star-Ledger Staff
For about $200, you could
get a pair of tickets to Brooke Shields' opening night debut
in Broadway's hit musical revival "Wonderful
Town."
At Glen Ridge High School,
it could be your ticket to the, well, Chess
Club.
The user fee has come to
Glen Ridge High School.
With opening day -- and
the deadline for paying up -- at hand, parents in Glen Ridge
have joined a vanguard of New Jersey school districts that
are charging an across-the-board user fee to augment soaring
costs borne of rising enrollments and shrinking state
aid.
Fran Wong has just written
out her $200 check, the per-student fee that for the first
time is being collected from the 412 students in grades 9
through 12. "It's sitting right here on my refrigerator,"
she said.
Without it, her daughter
Lindsey, last year's junior class president, would be
sidelined from clubs and sports. "Of course I don't want to
pay it. I got two kids in college already," Wong
said.
The flat fee allows
students to participate in as many activities as they wish.
For those who don't want to participate, no fee is
required.
For years, Ridgewood has
collected a flat $75 fee from 1,600 high school and 1,300
middle school students, amid heightened demand for clubs and
sports. "It really hasn't kept up with costs," said John
Porter Jr., schools superintendent in Ridgewood. "There's a
new movement going on. It's fee-for-play ... which is kind
of sad."
Until now, Boyd Sands,
executive director of the New Jersey State Interscholastic
Athletic Association, said he hadn't heard of any districts
outside of Ridgewood with an across-the-board co-curricula
fee.
"It's not very common, but
it's becoming more common," said Sands, noting that fees can
increase the expectations of parents about their child's
playing time. "Parents who would be paying would expect
their youngsters to be playing," he said. "That's a big
problem for coaches."
Frank Belluscio of the New
Jersey School Boards Association said he, too, sees the
blanket fee as a new arrival in New Jersey.
"Generally, what we've
seen in New Jersey has been parental contributions to
various sports programs," he said.
He noted just one other
district -- besides Ridgewood and Glen Ridge -- with a user
fee. Camden County's Haddonfield has a tier fee that ranges
from $100 for one high school student, $50 for the second
and a "family rate" of $150, he said.
In Glen Ridge, there's a
dearth of commercial ratables, meaning homeowners carry the
burden of plucking down $9,493 for each of its 1,800 school
children.
Still, it has plenty of
alternative funding initiatives.
The Glen Ridge Booster
Club has paid for everything from driving range time for the
golf team to a psychologist for the girls basketball team.
And the proceeds of the annual Ashenfelter 8K Classic --
more than $15,000 to date -- has made its way onto school
playing fields.
There's a money-raising
tie-in with Amazon.com, and a nonprofit called the Glen
Ridge Educational Foundation has pumped more than $400,000
into the schools in its decade-long existence.
For the first time, Glen
Ridge High has signed an exclusivity contract with Pepsi,
reining in $5,000 by allowing vending machines into the
school in a pact that also has sales-based
incentives.
Yet after three years of
debate, Glen Ridge opted to go with a user fee.
"I think what people don't
realize is that we pay stipends to advisers of clubs," said
Elisabeth Ginsburg, president of the Glen Ridge Board of
Education. "Every club, no matter which one, comes with a
price tag."
Those range from $1,100 to
$2,400 for the teacher on the lowest rung of the salary
guide to $5,782 to $8,585 on the highest, said
Superintendent Daniel Fishbein.
His letter to parents said
the fee would allow Glen Ridge to maintain its co-curriculum
program "without a reduction" in offerings or
staff.
Robert McAloon, guardian
of an incoming freshman who's interested in chess, intends
to take advantage of an escape clause in the $200 fee rule,
one that exempts students getting free or subsidized lunches
and families experiencing financial
difficulties.
"I'm pleading poverty," he
said. "It wouldn't be all that bad except our taxes go up
$600, $700 a year. It's a big increase."
It could be
worse.
In the Cincinnati suburb
of Fairfield, Ohio, it's all about
pick-and-choose.
For one parent of the high
school's class president, they're looking at a check of
$1,150 --$630 for tennis and $260 each for National Honor
Society and student government. She decided to skip Spanish
Club, according to the report in USA Today.
In Glen Ridge, the
projected revenue from user fees this year is $70,000, and
Ginsburg said she's aware of the burden on families with two
or more children in high school.
But don't expect
buy-one-get-one-free.
"I don't think we have a
volume discount. Then everyone would move to Glen Ridge.
Then we'd have a bigger problem," Ginsburg said.
Philip Read covers West Essex. He can be reached at
pread@starledger.com or (973) 392-1851.
Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
|