To help pay the $2,500 yearly cost—in 2003—of being a cheerleader at one Orange County, Calif., high school, one freshman sold $800 worth of candy, babysat, worked at a smoothie stand, and occasionally helped her mother on catering jobs, the Chicago Tribune reported 10 years ago.
The cheerleader never could raise enough money, but once the family and the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the school for violating her right to a free public education, guaranteed in the state’s constitution, the school gave in—but not before making a 14-year-old girl feel ashamed of being poor.
California is one of a handful of states to make the pay-to-play fees, as they’re called, illegal. Illinois isn’t one of those states, though, and a situation is developing this year in the West Aurora school district over unpaid fees, according to a report in the Beacon News last week:
Christi Tyler, district chief financial officer, recently presented an initial summary of outstanding fees, showing the most significant increase was unpaid student registration fees, which increased from $116,610 in 2012 to $183,053 in 2013. … Outstanding balances for student fees … have accumulated to an estimated $382,000 over the past four years.
Of course, no student is being expelled because his or her family can’t pay the fees. But the fees are on the rise across the country, and students are occasionally barred from participation in certain classes, such as science lab classes, behind-the-wheel driver’s ed, band, etc., due to nonpayment of fees.
School officials in Aurora are quick to point out that families who can’t afford the fees have several options for assistance. “This is not about punishing people who don’t have the ability to pay,” the Beacon-News quoted one school board member as saying. “We want to help them out. But the people who can, should not be able to slide and then we have to figure out ways to cut the budget.”
Often this assistance requires disclosure of private financial data, though. The fees are technically legal, but they lie on a slippery slope toward a place where schools start charging tuition for a public education. Providing assistance for certain families makes the fees look even more like tuition.
Technically, what families pay for isn’t delivery of the “curriculum,” so the fees aren’t considered tuition. Note, for example, that many schools define marching band to be an “extracurricular” activity. This is some legal maneuvering that allows the school to “charge” fees. Charging fees for a class that was part of the curriculum would be unconstitutional, of course, so some legal maneuvering is required.
In California, where pay-to-play fees were made illegal, even more legalese is required to get away with charging fees: “If a group (such as a band or advanced biology class) decides voluntarily to raise money to operate at some different level, they can do this, but it can get tricky,” the Tribune quoted Michael Hersher, deputy general counsel for the California Department of Education, as saying. “They may pose this as a voluntary thing, but really all the kids are coerced to pay money to go to a higher level.”
It’s the coercion I’m most worried about. No kid wants to feel poor, and no kid wants to be excluded from school functions, classes, or activities because his or her family can’t pay a fee. That’s coercion right there, and this whole pay-to-play thing starts to come dangerously close to discrimination. It’s going to come to a head if West Aurora or any other district decides to go too far to collect money its students “owe.”
