Paying to play
Students facing fees for sports
The budget ramifications of decreased funding to Pennsylvania’s school districts are beginning to be felt.
One of the most noteworthy examples of fallout has been in the Juniata County School District, where the entire interscholastic sports system was on the chopping block.
It has survived, but there’s a significant cost attached: The high school athletic departments at Juniata and East Juniata high schools will have to become entirely self-funded, and the parents of student-athletes will pay a premium price for a place on the squads.
As in, from between $200 and $350.
For a football player, the price is $350; for soccer, $250; for a cheerleader, $200. All junior-high sports will be priced at $200. And there will now be admission charges to any school athletic event.
Pay-to-play is not a new idea. It had its birth in California and Massachusetts as early as the 1970s, and it has shown some proclivity to spread ever since.
Even in the Lebanon Valley, the practice is in place at Palmyra Area School District, albeit the cost for the activities is $25, rather nominal compared to what is going to be instituted in Juniata and what goes on elsewhere. Palmyra has had a pay-to-play fee in place for about 15 years.
We believe this is a discussion that’s going to come up at every public school in the area and perhaps be revisited.
“Free” public schools aren’t free. Increasingly, parents are finding fees charged for everything from athletics to honors courses to science courses in which more expensive materials are used. It doesn’t quite fit the philosophy of a free public education as outlined in our founding documents, but the trend is gathering strength, and it’s likely, someday, to be the subject of a significant, national court case. That’s just our two cents on the concept.
The money to cover the costs of the athletic program will likely mean that all coaches in Juniata County School District will be unpaid. There are also serious questions we have.
We don’t doubt that the starting quarterback is going to be able to get on the team at the price charged; what about the second-string safety? What new pressures, which are already extreme, on schools and coaches will come to bear if parents are now fronting significant sums of cash for their child to be on the team?
Scott J. Smith, who now teaches at Central Michigan University, did a study on pay-to-play programs throughout the country as part of a dissertation.
His findings are good news, perhaps, for Palmyra and rather worse news for Juniata.
Smith found that districts that charge a nominal participation fee — like Palmyra’s — do not see limits in participation. For those that charge higher rates, and those at Juniata would certainly fit the bill, participation is affected.
Low-income students will have the fee waived, and we imagine the projected court case we foresee would happen a lot faster if that wasn’t the case. But there are going to be families that will now have hard decisions to make. Three-sport athletes? For the well-to-do or the not-well-to-do, but not for those in the vast middle ground. Will it become a matter of one child being able to participate at the cost of another’s budding athletic dreams?
We recognize that school districts are strapped for cash; there’s no public mood in place to see taxes continually rise; the state government has tightened the screws on local government to keep its own promise against raising state taxes; and there are still bills to be paid.
Juniata’s example seems like a very high price for a family to pay for something that — if it is considered part of a standard public education — is supposed to be free.
Lebanon Daily News