Pay to play? What do you think?

[roller coaster]

Oak Lawn HS is instituting a pay to play policy to help with the budget. What do you think? Do you have to pay for sports & extracurriculars?

http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/ne...rriculars.html

[steady eddy]

haha poor Oak Lawn.

[zpppe]

At LZ we have to pay $220 per sport.

[kmatus]

Originally Posted by zpppe

At LZ we have to pay $220 per sport.

Ar Carmel Catholic it's currently $120 per sport, but then again the is already tuition.

[mc140]

Its more common than you think. It would kill track and cross country at our school though if it ever happened.

[DiscoGary]

I would check the history of the district's employee/student ratio. It's probably been going up in your district like it has in all other districts.

Then find out why. At the bottom of it you should find an unfunded mandate by the State which requires that districts spend about $10,000 per special needs student.

Then chart the number of special needs students in your district over the last 15 years. You should find the number climbing by around 1% of the student body every year, like I found in the Deerfield district which was at 20% special needs students when I left that district 6 years ago.

What's happened is that the State has colluded with the teachers and SEI unions to force local districts to hire more people at their own expense. Then the local administration flags an increasing number of students as "special needs" which triggers more spending and hiring... which does no good for anyone beyond the few truly troubled students.

This puts an enormous burden on the school budget, which is why, even though taxes continue to go up, and schools rake in more and more money, they are still unable to do the basic job they did in the past.

Go to the school board and ask for the history of the employee/student ratio. It'll be fun.

Just sayin.

[roller coaster]

Originally Posted by zpppe

At LZ we have to pay $220 per sport.

Are you serious? That's insane.

[averagerunner11]

I've always had to pay to play sports since middle school. I thought it was normal.

Right now at my high school, it's 100$ for the first sport, 75$ for the second, and free for the third.

[Chonka10]

NV used to be $80 per sport but now it's something more ridiculous. If you did three sports you only had to pay for two though.

[emdeb]

I believe 5 years ago HF was $50...it's probably gone up since then. ^^ HF has the same 3 for 2 deal.