School fees

[wvjules]

The only fees we had to pay this year was $84 for Aquatics plus the whistle. I think we have to pay for the book because it is a workbook type from the Red Cross. It is the lifeguard course.

I think we had to pay something minimal for Ceramics last year too.

 

[daughtersrus]

What happens if you are not on free or reduced lunch but refuse to pay? Do they not register your child? Not give them a book? Withhold final grades?

In our district, if it's an elective class like band, outdoor ed...the student will be dropped from that class and have to pick another class. If it's the basic book fee, the district hires a collection agency that will go after the parents like any other bill.

If it's for transportation and you don't meet the qualification for free transportation, there won't be a bus showing up to pick up the kids.

 

[deserrai]

Here, if you qualify for free or reduced lunch program, the school fees are adjusted. If you live within 1 1/2 miles of the school, they will not adjust the bus fee. You would either need to pay the full cost, walk or provide your own transportation.

That makes sense. Good to know a child doesn't get punished because a parent can't afford.

 

[happygirl]

In our district, if it's an elective class like band, outdoor ed...the student will be dropped from that class and have to pick another class. If it's the basic book fee, the district hires a collection agency that will go after the parents like any other bill.

If it's for transportation and you don't meet the qualification for free transportation, there won't be a bus showing up to pick up the kids.

I wonder if they withhold transcription

 

[daughtersrus]

I wonder if they withhold transcription

I don't know but if the school fees are not paid before the student graduates, they are not allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony.

 

[hereyago]

No we don't get to keep the books and most times they are not new books. We pay 96 for DD about 3 to 7 for field trips & 130 for DS & 10 for gym uniform. DS starts HS new year so it will be more for books & 50 per sport, plus concert band uniform,. And we will pay for summer school DS is taking gym in Summer School so he can stay in Band, no extra room in his schedule. If you are on reduced or free lunch you don't pay for any of the above.

Kae

Dang! Now I can see if a parent had to pay for a replacement textbook, but it's like they are anticipating that then keeping the money.

Field trips: they may be a few dollars, 3-5. last year's field trip was maybe 15, but it was a really all day long thing as it was in the capital an hour away and we went to several museums.
In 6th grade, the last Monday before they got out of school for the summer, they wanted 20.00 to go to Jamestown because they were going to charter buses. No lunch included,etc. The history doesn't change. She stayed home. The kids who went said everything was the same as before-if you have been in the same school system, you had been there many times before.

 

[daughtersrus]

I looked up the fees for our district.
I'm not sure how it compares to everyone else.

Kindergarten
Book fee $30
Reg Fee $10

Late fee $5.00

Elementary
Book Fee $40
Reg Fee $10

Late Fee $10

Middle School

Book Fee $65
Reg Fee $30

Late Fee $20

Band instrument rental $50
Band Lock $4.25
Band uniform cleaning $10
Band uniform rental $15
Club fees $10 each
Graduation fee (8th grade) $20
NJHS $5
PE Lock $4.25
PE Uniform (TBD)
Sport $20 each but a total max of $50 for sports and clubs
Yearbook (TBD)

High School
Book Fee $75
Reg Fee $65
ID $5
Class Fee $5
Late $30

Band instrument rental $50
Band Lock $4.25
Band uniform cleaning $10
Band uniform rental $20
Activities/clubs $30 each
Adventure PE class $50
Drivers Ed $150
Parking Permit $60
Graduation fee (12th grade) $30
NHS $5
PE Lock $4.25
PE Uniform (TBD)
Sport $60 each but a total max of $150 for sports and clubs
Yearbook is extra (TBD)


In addition, there are field trip costs at all grade levels. They try to keep costs down by raising money via PTA/PTO at each school.

Transportation for those that don't qualify for free is

$500 a year for 1 child
$625 for 2 children
$725 for 3 or more.

The document doesn't specify if the children all have to be going to the same school or not. Schools are spread out through out the town so often times kids don't qualify for transportation at one grade level but will qualify at other levels.

There are roughly 14,000 students attending school in our district.

 

[emma'smom]

I wish our school system would start charging transportation fees...and raise school fees. We can't get enough funding through school levies---so programs are being cut left and right. Who says transportation is a "right"?

Charge us on a sliding scale (so that those on free/reduced lunch don't suffer) and maybe some of these perfectly-capable but entitled mommies who sit in their McMansions on Facebook all day will get out of their pajama pants, hop in their Lexus, and take their kids to school.....

...and if they don't want to---pony up!

 

[LBIJim]

No registration nor book fees in my district. A few classes did have fees, such as "Industrial Arts" (shop), some art classes like ceramics, and band class if you used a school instrument.

Almost everything extra curricular has fees, such as sports and marching band. Field trips aren't mandatory and all have fees.

No transportation fees if you live within the established parameters.

Never heard of a high school having a graduation fee. Cap and gown rental fee, yes, but not a charge to get your diploma.

All of the above was pretty much the same in my former district when I attended over 30 years ago.

Jim

 

[happygirl]

I looked up the fees for our district.
I'm not sure how it compares to everyone else.

Kindergarten
Book fee $30
Reg Fee $10

Late fee $5.00

Elementary
Book Fee $40
Reg Fee $10

Late Fee $10

Middle School

Book Fee $65
Reg Fee $30

Late Fee $20

Band instrument rental $50
Band Lock $4.25
Band uniform cleaning $10
Band uniform rental $15
Club fees $10 each
Graduation fee (8th grade) $20
NJHS $5
PE Lock $4.25
PE Uniform (TBD)
Sport $20 each but a total max of $50 for sports and clubs
Yearbook (TBD)

High School
Book Fee $75
Reg Fee $65
ID $5
Class Fee $5
Late $30

Band instrument rental $50
Band Lock $4.25
Band uniform cleaning $10
Band uniform rental $20
Activities/clubs $30 each
Adventure PE class $50
Drivers Ed $150
Parking Permit $60
Graduation fee (12th grade) $30
NHS $5
PE Lock $4.25
PE Uniform (TBD)
Sport $60 each but a total max of $150 for sports and clubs
Yearbook is extra (TBD)


In addition, there are field trip costs at all grade levels. They try to keep costs down by raising money via PTA/PTO at each school.

Transportation for those that don't qualify for free is

$500 a year for 1 child
$625 for 2 children
$725 for 3 or more.

The document doesn't specify if the children all have to be going to the same school or not. Schools are spread out through out the town so often times kids don't qualify for transportation at one grade level but will qualify at other levels.

There are roughly 14,000 students attending school in our district.

OMG I won't be complaining about what we might have to be paying

 

[Anne34]

Illinois - school district tax on property bill for an average home in district, with average taxes, school portion - approx. $7,200. We live in a far, far suburb of Chicago, amidst the farm fields.

High school fee (public school, fees at registration for every school) - 2011 fee was $365.

Books are extra. You pay for each book.

You must buy the lesson planner the high school offers. The hall passes are in the lesson planner. Planner is "only" $10.

Every science class has extra fees, as do extracurriculars and clubs. If your student is in the honours program, the fees are even higher. I am glad my children have been in the honours program, but dear Lord I hate those fees!

Sports are $85 per sport. Uniforms are extra. Team events and registration to the finals (if the team makes it) are also extra.

The district owns its own busses. I assume the bus fee is either in the registration fee or in our property taxes. Yippee.

There are about 4,000 students in the high school. This is a very large district, but also one of the worst districts for test scores, with a very large minority population. However, because the school is so large, it offers a lot of opportunities for good students. Due to a grant from a local organization that wanted to help students succeed, my eldest graduated with almost a full year of first-year college courses transfered to her University, at no cost to us (other than school fees). No grant for the youngest child, but at least she has lots of AP courses to choose from.

Also, since the State of IL is still behind on payments (which the school district reminds us of on the website and in every email), there are often "extra" fees for innocuous things that are supposed to cover shortages.

Oh, how I hate IL. I can't wait until my DD graduates and I move out of this state!

Oh, and one more thing - State of IL did away with the writing portion of the ACT this year to save money. The schools my child is looking at all require the writing portion. Joy of joys, my child will be taking the ACT three times, twice with writing, so she has a change to get a great writing score. We get to pay for those extra tests, too. I hate Illinois.

Yep -- we feel the same. It's also cheaper for my DD18 to go to an out of state college than instate U of I. That was even before her merit money was added in! Crazy!!

Can you see why it was named the #3 corrupt state in a recently??!!

 

[thinkerbell]

our school district doesn't have privatized busing and we are a few thousand miles from you.

To the op: we don't have busing costs. And we don't have a set educational fee, but there are fees, such as an art fee when you start classes. Or lab fees in the middle school/high school classes.

Nikki Haley, the governor of SC, keeps saying that we are the last state that does not have privatized buses. She must be talking about the fact that there are no school districts in our state that have privatized but all other states have at least one district that does???? I don't know. I just know she keeps saying it like we are way behind the times or something. I don't get why she wants to change it. I know in the district we work in, the parents will not have the money to pay for transportation.

The last state, or the last district in your state?

No district in our state has privatized busing. She keeps saying we are the last state. Sounds like she is misinformed or she wants us to believe that we need to jump on the bandwagon.

 

[mom2aandj]

Like a PP mentioned, in a lot of Illinois school districts, there are high fees PLUS high property tax. Our state is behind on giving schools the monies that are promised, and this is after cutting a lot of the funding the used to provide.

yes, another IL resident who pays very high property taxes and hundreds of dollars of school fees for my kids. But, it has been this way in this district for years, even before IL started defaulting on its payments, so we went in with our eyes open and it is an excellent, high achieving school district. Our alternative was to remain living in downtown Chicago and pay tens of thousands of dollars in private school bills, each year, for 16 or so years. So this is still a better deal.

 

[Cantw8]

I've never paid any fees or transportation fees so I can't help. Our school tax takes care of all that. I've never heard of school fees for public schools.

same here and I'm in Pa

 

[Allison]

What happens if you are not on free or reduced lunch but refuse to pay? Do they not register your child? Not give them a book? Withhold final grades?

Then the child is not a registered student of the district.

 

[Kae]

What happens if you are not on free or reduced lunch but refuse to pay? Do they not register your child? Not give them a book? Withhold final grades?

Collection Agency.

Kae

 

[momto2inKC]

No fees for school here. We will have to pay $15 for a parking pass once the kids start driving, but that's it.

 

[pooh4evr]

Suburban St Louis schools here, very large district -no fees for any bussing (which is provided for all students even during summer school) books or anything else (all my kids are elementary so dont know if there are lab fees or anything else in the upper grades) lunches are 1.75 a day.

 

[leebee]

People yell and scream about paying taxes. They yell and scream about paying fees. Then they yell and scream about decreased services, too many kids in a classroom, cutbacks in bus service. The money has to come from somewhere.

And that's it in a nutshell!

To extend this, politicians really love to be able to campaign for reelection and say, "I didn't raise your taxes; vote for meeeee!" Technically, maybe they didn't raise taxes; instead, there are all kinds of user fees tacked onto all other kinds of things- going to a state park, buying soda or junk food, buying alcohol or toilet paper- because the money has to come from somewhere!

 

[daughtersrus]

OMG I won't be complaining about what we might have to be paying

As other pp from IL have said, we also pay pretty high property tax to our school district. I just ran the numbers on my bill and roughly 69% of my bill goes to our school district.

Yep -- we feel the same. It's also cheaper for my DD18 to go to an out of state college than instate U of I. That was even before her merit money was added in! Crazy!!

Can you see why it was named the #3 corrupt state in a recently??!!

My 2 oldest DD went to CC for 2 years and then transferred to ISU. DD#1 was lucky and got selected for a tuition waiver and graduated with a degree in SpEd with very little debt. She was only on campus 3 semesters because she did her field based and student teaching semesters in the Chicago suburbs and lived at home. She only had room, board and books to pay.

DD#2 wasn't so lucky. She applied for the waiver every year but wasn't selected. She will graduate next Dec with a SpEd degree as well. She has more debt because she has room, board, book and tuition. She also lived on campus 3 semesters and moved home in Dec to start field based in the Chicago suburbs as well. We hope that her student teaching placement fall 12 semester will also be here so she can live at home.