• Lakota school board members, also facing intense budget pressures, this week increased pay-to-play fees for sports and other extracurricular activities. Junior high students will have to pay $350 to participate in each sport and high school students will have to pay $550, significant increases over past pay-to-play fees. And there will be no cap for families.
Of course, neither district is unique. Districts across the state are waiting to learn with certainty how Gov. John Kasich’s budget will affect their state funding, as well as how initiatives like Senate Bill 5 — which changes the rules for collective bargaining for teachers and other public employees — will affect their budgets in the years to come.
But these developments do raise interesting questions. How much longer can public school districts continue to offer the same level of extracurricular activities to which communities have become accustomed? The governor has talked about privatizing prisons and other state services. Is the Cincinnati decision the first step in this region toward privatizing the school activities that do not relate to the schools’ academic mission? (Think a Little League or pee wee football program that continues through high school years.)
There’s no argument here about the value of extracurricular activities in our schools. The lives of many students throughout Butler County have been enriched enormously by participation in activities that teach teamwork, camaraderie, good sportsmanship and the rewards of hard work. Winning basketball and football teams have come to define communities like Hamilton and Middletown, and have been undeniable points of community pride and fan enjoyment.
But can we continue to afford it? Compared to a generation or two ago, the number of extracurricular programs in public schools has grown, each having their own associated costs, such as supplemental contracts for coaches/advisers, transportation, etc. The implementation of Title IX in our schools over the past four decades has given well-deserved opportunities to female athletes, but it’s added to the growth of activities and the associated costs.
It’s been common in recent years to see public school districts resort to the threat of eliminating sports and other extracurricular activities as a way to coax voters to pass tax levies. Districts have also resorted to elaborate pay-to-play programs during levy campaigns and, in some instances, some form of pay-to-play has remained in place, even after a levy has passed, in order to shift the costs associated with sports and other activities to the participating families, not the general taxpaying public.
But even with pay-to-play, there’s no way to compensate for the amount of time, attention, energy and indirect costs that are expended in our public schools in the name of sports. Just look at all the time and energy spent finding a new basketball coach for Middletown High School. And often hiring decisions about classroom teachers are influenced by whether districts need coaches to fill certain slots.
Taxpayers say they are fed up with higher taxes, and have elected a governor who is determined to shrink their tax burden, as well as the size of state government. Taxpayers also are demanding that our schools improve their academic results, and Gov. Kasich is poised to offer parents more private options and to bring the Teach For America program to Ohio.
So, as districts look for non-essential programs and activities to cut in order to balance their troubling budgets, the proper role of sports and other extracurriculars will come under the magnifying glass, too. The extent to which voters are willing to support extracurriculars — or perhaps find a new paradigm, as Cincinnati apparently has — is an honest conversation that districts should be having with their constituents, as we re-examine and reshape education in Ohio.