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Friday, October 13, 2006 • BY JOHN WIHBEY AND BRENDAN BERLS • Star-Ledger Staff

At a time when the state's voters are revolting against soaring school budgets, some cash-strapped districts are rethinking how to fund sports, band and even the chess club.

The result has been the creeping expansion of user fees assessed to families whose children act, sing, kick, throw or run for a few hours after the final bell.

In Morris County, Washington Township is joining neighboring Chester Township in levying fees for the first time this fall. Students at Long Valley Middle School, in Washington, will pay $50 to play sports and $25 for all other extracurricular activities, including the spring musical. It will cost $30 for Chester middle schoolers to play a sport.

Glen Ridge, East Brunswick, Sparta, Westfield, Ridgewood and Long Hill are among about a dozen districts now asking parents to pay before their kids can participate in some types of activities, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Districts now charging fees say defeated school budgets forced funding changes, and nonacademic programs were the first to go.

That's what happened in East Brunswick, which began charging a $50 fee for sports and $15 for extracurricular clubs this fall after its budget failed this earlier this year.

In Glen Ridge, the budget had not failed, but the district was straining at its annual increase cap in 2004 when the school board decided to impose the fee. The district charges a $200 flat fee for participation in sports or clubs.

"Nobody's happy about doing this," Superintendent Daniel Fishbein said. "But we want to provide these opportunities to the students."

Families have traditionally picked up the tab for extracurricular equipment like athletic cleats and musical instruments, but paying an outright surcharge strikes some parents of middle and high schoolers, coaches and even kids as unfair.

"My friends on the soccer team thought it was a rip-off," said Charlie Durkin, 14, an eighth-grader and cross-country runner at Black River Middle School in Chester. "I thought that if you made the team it was your privilege to play on it for free."

This type of "pay-to-play" is much more widespread outside New Jersey and has been imposed in thousands of districts around the country. Most fees nationally are less than $100, but in some districts they range far higher -- as in Fairfield, Ohio, where high school students are charged $630 per sport.

A study last year by the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association found more than 35 percent of high schools have such systems, mostly blanket fees that cover all sports, said Mike Blackburn, associate executive director of the Indianapolis-based professional group. The figure represents an increase of nearly 10 percent since 1995.

Another finding in the study was the user fees have had little negative effect on student participation in sports, Blackburn said. Only 9 percent of athletic directors reported decreases since the fees were imposed, while 73 percent said it remained the same and 18 percent reported an increase.

Long Hill Superintendent Arthur DiBenedetto also said the fees, now in place for a second year, have yet to show any impact on participation at his middle school.

"I have not received one complaint," he said.

Glen Ridge, Chester, Washington Township and Long Hill officials all said no student would be turned away from sports or clubs and that they would subsidize kids who can't afford it.

Ridgewood was among the first towns to charge activity fees, starting in 1995.

The school boards association has not taken a position on the fees, but it is monitoring the trend, spokesman Mike Yaple said.

"I can't imagine student activity fees are something that any school board would eagerly adopt," he said. "Boards are faced with the choice of eliminating some programs and keeping them by charging these fees."

For parents of highly involved kids, the new fees may add up.

Lucy Leidwinger, a mother of an eighth-grader at Long Valley Middle School in Washington Township, said she will need to pay at least $125 in fees this year for her daughter to sing in several choruses and play instruments.

"A lot of parents believe we pay enough in taxes," she said. "We sort of wonder where our tax money is going."

And coaches aren't always happy about the fees, or the budget cuts with which they are often packaged.

Sharon Zisa, who coached soccer in Chester for three years, said she gave up coaching this fall when the district cut her assistant. She said if there are fees for sports, all extracurricular activities should carry fees -- which is not the case in Chester.

"There are parents who have to pay $60 for two kids, and some kids play three sports," Zisa said.

But Robin Gurin, another Long Valley parent, said she doesn't mind the $250 in fees her middle school daughter will likely rack up this year.

"Anything we can do to alleviate the burden on over-55 people, we should do," she said.

The growing user fee trend has attracted the notice of Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester), who has introduced a bill to ban the fees.

"Public education is not a la carte," Burzichelli said. "If (an activity) is worthy to be included as part of the child's education, it should be part of the package."

New Jersey would not be the first state to ban activity fees if the law goes through. California has outlawed the practice since a state Supreme Court ruling in 1984.

Such a ban would make it difficult for districts that have begun to rely on fees for sports and other extracurricular programs. Washington Township -- where the budget was cut by $305,000, much of it from music and athletic programs -- estimates it will collect $30,000 in activity fees this school year.

Liz George, secretary for the school board, noted it costs $496 to pay for just one player on the basketball team -- uniform, coaches' salaries, referee fees and travel -- and more than $100 for some students in other extracurricular programs.

"It's getting more and more difficult to get these types of things in our budget," George said.

Hey, kid -- want to play? In some schools, it'll cost you

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