School fees up 45% in three years

"MN Education"

02/04/2006

From busing to sports, families paying more; reasons for rise in dispute

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Students and parents are getting hit with sharply rising fees for bus rides, sports and other extracurricular activities at Minnesota public schools.

School fees rose 45 percent from fiscal years 2002 to 2005, according to a report released Friday by the Minnesota Department of Education. It marked the first time that statewide statistics were available on the issue.

Last year, schools charged $68 million in fees, compared with $47 million in 2002. Fifty school districts increased their fee collection by at least 100 percent between 2002 and 2005.

School officials blamed flat state funding earlier this decade for their increasing reliance on fees.

“We’re seeing a gradual shift away from the state taking responsibility to fund education to pushing some of that burden onto students and parents,” said Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts.

“I think it’s just nickel and diming students,” said state Rep. Mindy Greiling of Roseville, the lead Democrat on the House Education Finance Committee.

She blamed the fee increases on Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Republican legislators who signed no-new-taxes campaign pledges. That, she suggested, held down state aid to education, which forced schools to rely more heavily on fees.
But state Education Commissioner Alice Seagren said there’s no correlation between recent state education funding and school fee increases. She noted the largest jumps in fees occurred in 2001-02, before Pawlenty took office and when the state increased school funding by $104 per pupil.

“I don’t think that you can quite blame the governor for this one,” Seagren said.

Fees rose 23 percent in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, but the growth slowed to 12 percent in 2004 and 5 percent in 2005.
“It looks like it’s flattening out now,” Seagren said.

She said she wouldn’t be surprised if fees leveled off this year after Pawlenty and the Legislature increased education funding by $800 million over two years.

Still, Seagren said she is concerned that further fee increases might harm children from low-income families.
“We want to make sure that all kids have opportunities to participate,” she said.

The Roseville district Greiling represents is among those that have started charging for busing.

Starting last school year, secondary students bused less than two miles to school have been charged a $170 fee. There is a $250 maximum per family.

On top of that, “we’ve increased fees for activities and athletics,” said superintendent John Thein. “We’ve tried to make them reasonable.”

The fees are $150 per sport for high school students, $90 at the middle school level, with a $450 maximum per family.
Cathy Wyland, community services director for the Centennial School District, was hardly surprised by the 64 percent rise in her district’s fees from 2002 to 2005.

“Budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts,” she said. “We had $5.4 million in budget cuts over the last four years.”
In St. Paul, fees have been mostly flat the past four years, said district comptroller Larry Shomion.

In the Mounds View School District, fees increased about 13 percent during that period. District spokesman Colin Sokolowski said the district’s falling enrollment has resulted in less state funding. Meanwhile, parents have told district officials they’d rather pay some fees than see larger classes. “Class size is always king in our district,” he said.

To ease the burden, Mounds View and other school districts set a cap on fees per family and waive fees for children who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.

While school fees have been rising, the report noted they account for less than 1 percent of the revenues public school districts receive.

Athletics are the largest source of fees. Last year, schools raised $28 million from both student athletes and patrons of sporting events. That’s up about 40 percent from four years earlier.

Seagren noted that school districts still pay 80 percent of the cost of athletic programs from their general revenues. Fees account for the remaining one-fifth.

Some parents said schools have done a good job of keeping the fees reasonable.

William Knutson, former PTA president at Roseville Area High School, said he hasn’t heard parents complain about the fees. He has had to shell out for his son, a junior at the high school, to play basketball and participate in weightlifting, but “to tell you the truth, I haven’t thought of it much,” he said. “For those that participate and use the activities, you pay a little bit more. But it’s not extraordinary.’’

The fastest-growing source of fees is transportation. Schools charged almost three times as much for bus rides in 2005 as they did in 2002. A dozen districts began charging busing fees for the first time during that time.

“It’s a troubling trend. Fees are regressive,” said Jim Gelbmann, a member of the South Washington County school board. “How do you maintain quality education when state revenue isn’t keeping pace with the inflationary increase that you incur?”

The state generally bars school districts from charging fees for required academic programs. They can charge fees for extracurricular activities, sports equipment, musical instruments, field trips, driver education and personal items such as class rings and yearbooks.

Districts also may charge for bus rides for students living less than two miles from school and for trips to extracurricular events or to colleges.

The Legislature ordered the Education Department to tally the district-by-district fees. Greiling predicted the report would spark a legislative debate over the state’s role in schools’ use of fees.

Croonquist of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts said the report begs for further research.

“Have we seen less student involvement in extracurricular activities? Anecdotal evidence will say yes,” he said. “But I haven’t seen any hard numbers.”

Doug Belden, Megan Boldt, Gita Sitaramiah and Mary Jo Sylwester contributed to this report.

to learn more

The Department of Education’s report on school fees is available on the agency’s Web site: http://education.state.mn.us. Click on “Reports to Legislature’’ under “Legislation’’ section. Then select “School district and charter school student fees.”