WHAT IS A “FREE” EDUCATION?
For many years schools across the nation have been charging “pay-to-play” fees for sports. Now, they’re expanding the fees to just about all extracurricular activities.
Faced with shrinking budgets, schools are charging for things parents once took for granted: playing football or field hockey, singing in the glee club, or, in at least one case, accepting membership in the National Honor Society.
…Pay schemes vary across the country. Some schools charge one-time annual fees, no matter how many clubs a student joins. Others charge per activity. Some charge just for sports, others for any out-of-classroom club. Often fees are supplemental. The Fairfield district charges 100 percent of cost: $630 per high school sport, per child; $260 per club.
I applaud the distrcts who charge for sports as it injects a tiny bit of market forces into the (corrupt) system. That being said, the NHS? I was in that in high school. We didn’t do anything. Membership meant you got to wear some silly rope on your graduation robe. And how can it cost $260 per student per club? Where are the expenses? Presumably, the vast majority goes towards teachers’ (extra) pay. Just how much do they get to sponsor a club? Parents are up in arms over these fees, but they’re fighting the wrong battle. Instead of arguing that the fees are excessive, they’re making a civil rights issue of it.
[P]arents and other critics are railing against a system they say denies access to a free public education.
I’m pretty sure that no state (with the possible exception of Texas) has the right to play high school football as part of its state constitution.