The Wawascene

The Wawascene was created by Dr. Mark Stock, former Superintendent of the Wawasee Community School Corporation. Due to its local popularity, Dr. Stock has left the blog site to future Wawasee administrators.

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Monday, May 02, 2005

Pay to Play

Here is another result of inadequate funding in the transportation fund for some school districts.

Here is a school district that has had to start charging a fee for extra-curricular transportation of athletes.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

IMHO I'd rather see a small fee required to pay for transportation than to have a sport cut or a staff member cut. $20 per student, per sport if used specifically for transportation seems like it would defray costs quite a bit. Already it's been reported that staff positions have been cut. What will be the result of these cuts? Larger classes, less coaching staff, or possibly even less classes held in that teachers area of expertise?
I know there will be those that say some families cannot afford $20 per sport. But let's think about these things
1. Sports are optional
2. Students could pick 1 sport rather than multiple sports
3. Families could give up something in order to raise the $20 for example cigarettes, alcohol, eating in restaurants, junk food, cable tv, or internet service
4. Businesses may donate money for those families that can truly not afford the $20. I have no doubt that local businesses would have made donations for the teams this past year to travel to semi-state/state games.

Granted the amount of $20 was just a number pulled out of the air. Maybe a breakdown of costs to travel to an away football game could be shown with the number of students involved in that particular sport.

5/02/2005
Anonymous said...

While I agree that I don't want to see anymore staff go, I think it unfair to charge parents for this cost. Parents are already fined heavily when it comes to "free" public education: texts, PE uniforms, folders, school supplies, clothing, etc. Also, while I do not understand why families spend money on certain things that I do not see as a priority, I do not feel as though it is our place to judge. Ruby Payne points out the differences between higer socio-economic groups and lower ones.

Most of the time, it's not the lower-income families that have children in sports because they can't afford to pick up children after school or pay for extra costs of the sport. If a child is in sports, we should not penalize the family for it. There are enough costs for families regarding school as it is. This is not just a trying time for education, it's a trying time for all.

5/03/2005

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