As public schools open around the country, families are finding themselves paying steep fees for all kinds of activities and services that once came at no extra charge.

Starting this fall, middle-school students in Gurnee, Ill., must pay $145 to participate in a team sport and $60 to join the school band or choir. High-school students in Harvard, Mass., have to buy their own Advanced Placement text books, at $85 each. Across the country in Lake Oswego, Ore., a family could pay as much as $900 a year for their kids to play high-school sports.

The so-called user or "pay-for-play" fees, as many school districts refer to them, are an effort to make up for shortfalls in state and local funding caused by the still lackluster economy. Massachusetts, Nebraska and Oregon have recently cut funding for K-12 education, while other states have provided little or no increase.

Local budgets are also feeling the pinch, particularly in those districts with caps on property taxes, a major source of public-school funding. With fewer funds coming in, the onus is increasingly on families to help make up the slack.


School districts have resorted to fees on families during past budget problems. But many districts report that their fees have reached unprecedented levels this year, with charges being slapped on everything from high-school parking spaces to acting in the school play. And services that families already had to pay for are seeing big increases. In Arlington, Mass., for example, families have to pay $1,500 to send a child to full-day kindergarten this school year, triple the cost last year.

Some school districts have considered cutting their extracurricular programs entirely because they worried about discriminating against lower-income students. But many chose to keep them and charge the fees because extracurricular activities are important in the college admissions process. Still, many officials in districts around the country are concerned that the new charges will keep some kids from signing up.

"The last thing we want is to have kids not participating," says William Korach, superintendent of the Lake Oswego School District. "This is really pushing the edges and we're not sure we've got it right." Depending on a family's financial need, he says, the district may waive fees or allow students to work them off in some way.

It will cost Kris White close to $1,500 in extra fees for her four children who attend school in Lake Oswego. "My kids play two or three sports a year," she says. Though she says she can afford the charges, she adds, "What's hard for me to see is that there might be kids thinking about going out [for a team] and are being held back because of the costs."

In Illinois, the school board for Gurnee School District 56 voted last month to charge fees, most of which affect children attending Viking Middle School. They range from $40 to $145 for a variety of clubs and sports, including intramurals and band. The fees are intended to raise the $150,000 needed to pay for the programs.

That has made some people in town irate. Mike Bandman, a band instructor at Viking, calculates that his daughter Amy, who attends the school, will be charged a total of $260 for the clubs and sports she is signing up for this year. "I'm refusing to pay," he says.

The notion of a public education is "truly in jeopardy when you have to start charging these kinds of user fees," says Markham Jeep, a Gurnee school-board member who voted against them. For some kids, he points out, the very thing that keeps them coming back to school are the kinds of activities that will no longer come without added cost.

"Particularly at the middle school -- that 12 to 14 age group -- they desperately need something to wrap their brains around so that they remain engaged. And for so many of them it's the extracurriculars that ... get them over that hurdle," he says.

Fees aren't just controversial -- in at least one state they've long been illegal. In 1984, the California Supreme Court ruled that imposing fees for extracurricular programs violated the state constitution's provision that public education be free.

Some districts are turning to private donations to eliminate the need for fees, or at least cover the expenses for families who can't afford them. After the Oxford Public Schools district in Massachusetts decided to get rid of all clubs and sports, a group of parents, teachers and administrators formed a fund-raising committee called Save Our Sports. Their goal is to gather $300,000 to pay for coaches, equipment and other athletic necessities. So far they have cobbled together over $135,000 from raffles, bake sales and car washes.

Other districts are contemplating a similar approach. Michigan's East Lansing Public School District, which will begin charging a one-time participation fee of $100 for sports and performing arts, has received anonymous pledges of more than $25,000 from parents, to assist students who can't afford the fees. For families who come forward and say they can't afford the charges, "we don't go through a rigorous query," says Thomas Giblin, the superintendent. "If they say, 'We can't afford it,' we'll take care of it."