Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 26, 1995 TAG: 9509260071
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Not quite. These days, public schools charge various fees to students and their families. Each fee, in itself, might seem a small enough matter. But they add up. At many schools, they're more than a nuisance. They're getting out of hand.
Students in Virginia used to have to pay to rent textbooks, an outrage in itself. The legislature finally ended that practice a couple of years ago. But the mandate to stop charging was only partially funded. The state pays school divisions a portion of book costs.
Funny thing: With textbook fees disallowed, fees for other things - some of them educational activities - have not gone away. In many cases, they've multiplied.
These fees cover everything from hallway lockers ($2-$5) to gym suits (about $9), towels ($2-$5), parking ($5-$7), driver's education ($75-100), class fees ($20-$30 or more), club fees (up to $10) and workbooks ($8 to $10).
The cumulative burden is not trivial, particularly for low-income families and families with multiple children in school. And more troubling than the money is the principle of the thing.
At least with textbook fees, low-income students who qualified for subsidized lunch programs got a break on book rentals, too. Not so with these other fees. No matter what your family's income, you must pay. In at least one Roanoke city school, students have been given the impression that if fees aren't paid up, you can't graduate. (In fact, withholding grades or graduation isn't allowed.)
While some fees, such as for club membership, are optional, others are not. In most cases, you pay a towel fee whether or not you use the school's towels. Class dues, which are mandatory, have covered such expenses as postage and paper costs for publications.
In some school divisions, students studying computers, typing, foreign languages and the like are charged for their workbooks if the students write in them. Excuse us, but what's the point of workbooks if not to work in them? If these are educational materials included in the standard curriculum, they ought to be distributed to everyone, not just those who pay.
Fee policies vary considerably among school divisions. Salem parents, for example, pay less in fees than Roanoke city parents do. In many cases, fees also differ among schools within the same division. (Richard Kelley, assistant superintendent for operations at Roanoke city schools, asked principals this year to make their policies uniform. But the fees aren't part of the overall school-board budget; they stay within the budgets of the schools that charge them.)
The fees send a subtle but unfortunate message about the value of education. With the advent of site-based management and continuous increases in costs, schools need to attend more closely to expenses. But these are still public schools. As it is, at least at one Roanoke school, students aren't allowed to fill out answers on tests - they're asked to use their own notebook paper - because testing and other materials are recycled.
You want to talk about user fees? Imagine the cost to taxpayers - for insurance, equipment, uniforms, facilities and everything else - to field a single football player. The football player and his family contribute not a dime to the huge costs involved. Yet other students, whose families may be struggling with expenses at least as much as the school is, have to pay for workbooks. That's not right.
by CNB