Does your public school charge a textbook/consumables fee? How much?

[atommom]

Our district charges $75. We don't like paying $150 for two kids, but we can. I know there are many families in the area that can't afford that at all, and many more who pay up but have a hard time making ends meet afterward. It seems to me (the flaming liberal) that it would only take a miniscule tax hike for the state to cover these expenses itself. But that's not likely to happen here in Kansas, where our elected officials like to call the public schools "pigs at the trough."

What kind of fees does your school district charge? I'm curious.

[Jed Dilligan]

1. Kansas, eh?

Is that $150 worth of Bibles and communion wafers?

[atommom]

3. If they start doing that, I will personally storm the school with

a torch and a pitchfork! No, make that the statehouse ... they mostly deserve it anyway.

[MercutioATC]

5. www.venganza.org

A justified (and funny) letter to the Kansas State Board of Education that snowballed into a new "religion"...

www.venganza.org

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. Guess you haven't heard the news

The crazy state school board members are gone. But I suppose it's more fun for you to tease Kansans.

[Jed Dilligan]

37. Where'd they go?

[proud2BlibKansan]

38. There was an election 2 weeks ago

They were voted out of the majority.

[atommom]

39. Which reminds me...

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[postulater]

2. Ours is about $125 apiece

[MercutioATC]

4. Westlake, Ohio...

No set "fee", but basic school supplies are required as are special material/workbook fees for certain classes (example: special art supplies fee for some art clases or workbook fees for some science classes).

[Mabus]

6. We also have to pay a bus fee or the kids walk

from our local paper, a run-down on fees in our area.

In Lawrence, the textbook fee is $72 per year for each student, except kindergartners, who pay $36. Participation fees for sports and other extracurricular activities are $50 per student, and bus fees are $240 per year. There are fee waivers for students who qualify for free or reduced lunch.

***

In the Baldwin school district, the textbook fee is $30 for kindergartners, $40 for grades first through fifth and $50 for grades sixth through 12th. The activity fee is $30 per sport per student, and busing is free.

****

In the Topeka school district, which has nearly 13,000 students, textbook rentals are $30 for kindergartners, $80 for grades first through fifth, $70 for middle-school students and $75 for high school. There are reduced prices for low-income students.

Bus service costs $300 per student annually, but it falls to $200 per student if a family has multiple students going to the same school. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/aug/06/school_fees_harder_some_pay/

fwiw, I attended public schools in OKC. At that time the books were provided free. The bus was also free but we never rode it. It wasn't that we didn't want to ride it, it was that we lived within a mile of our schools and bus service wasn't provided to those of us who lived that close. We could have gone about five blocks over (and across a main thoroughfare with 40-45 mph speed limit) to catch one but if we walked that same five blocks in the other direction we'd be at school.

[sabbat hunter]

8. lower property taxes

the reason why they have these 'fees' is to claim their property taxes are lower (the main source of revenue for many school districts) but yet you still have to pay the costs, just in a different way.

[Mabus]

13. Actually Gov. Graves (R) cut funding for education

In August 2002, then-Gov. Bill Graves reduced school funding statewide by $17.5 million — a $27 per-student reduction in base state aid. (from the same article: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/aug/06/school_fees_harder_some_pay/)

Our property taxes since 2000 have more than doubled and in fact, they have almost tripled. This really sucks since they started closing schools on the east side of town to help fund those on the development-rich west side.

[Captain Hilts]

7. In SC, book rental fees in the early 70s totalled $30.

In cash. The books were old and dilapitated.

It was to keep black kids from getting their degrees. If you couldn't pay the fees, you got no degree.

[ScreamingMeemie]

9. Private school. $600 book fees this year.

80 dollar lunch fees..

$1000 bus fees...

:hi:

[atommom]

10. So what you're saying is, I'm a whiner.

I don't deny it. :hi: I'm not surprised at your higher book fees, but I am surprised at the bus fee. How long is the bus route?

[ScreamingMeemie]

16. It is a 55 mile round trip price. I am more stunned by the book fees.

I would get by cheaper buying the books outside of school, this is just easier, thus we pay. That and the "lunch fee". The lunch fee is not for lunch (food) itself, it's for lunchroom maintenance and such. It doesn't even pay an employee salary. All lunch workers are parent volunteers. I know we chose to put our daughter through school this way, but it irks me that they nickel and dime us to almost twice the tuition in misc fees the year through. :hi:

[Emit]

17. How many lunches does the $80 charge cover?

I'd be curious to know and to compare it to our public school system's lunch fees here. On edit, I hadn't seen your previous post, which answers my question. TX much.

Also on edit, my sister's daughter is in a private school here in my same town. The tuition is quite high (they do offer scholarships and are very good at making sure students are not turned away for financial reasons) -- but it is a great school. I don't know what their other fees include, but I do know that my niece was required to have a lap top as part of her supplies for her curriculum. BTW, I love this school, and wish my daughter would consider attending. However, my daughter is pretty entrenched where she is at our district's school, and it's one of the best public schools in town, so I'm okay where she's at. And, if she were to want to go to the private school, we would, no doubt, be looking at scholarship options due to the fact that we are a family of five on one modest income.

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. None. It's for maintenance of the lunchroom and stuff.

:hi: Lunches at her school cost $3.50/lunch. She brown bags it.

[Emit]

20. Thanks, I was curious because our lunches are $2

and I always wonder how they can afford to feed a kid a meal for $2/day -- although, my 7 year-old used to complain when she bought lunch that they had ran out of whatever was on the menu and she'd end up with a yogurt and a muffin -- and that the pizza and chicken things were pretty awful. My daughter brown bags it now, too, with few exceptions.

[sandnsea]

28. Free lunch subsidies

And when the breakfast program is run, it's usually enough to fund the entire school meal program without going into the district budget at all. At least that's the argument used to get schools to implement breakfast programs.

[Yupster]

30. Our private school doesn't charge a lunch fee

but the lunches are $ 4.25 each which is more than double the public school lunches, even the ones which aren't free or reduced which over half our school district's lunches are.

[WinkyDink]

24. Private = Optional. You pay more at Tiffany's, too, than at Wal-Mart's.

[ScreamingMeemie]

25. Ummm...please read my post, thank you.

:hi: Nowhere did I say it wasn't. Let's not get all twisted.

[Yupster]

29. My kid goes to private school too

I'm amazed at the book costs. e got ours second hand but still well over $ 200 for a fourth grader.

Also supplies are crazy. Each kid must bring a long list of supplies including three large boxes of kleenex, two yellow highlighters, two rolls of film, two casette tapes, four red pens, and on and on.

You hear about public school teachers having to use their own money for supplies and stuff. Not our school. We even buy their red pens.

On the other hand they don't make nearly what public school teachers make and their retirement isn't half as good.

Don't know about bus costs as we drive him to school.

Tuition is $ 11,000 a year.

[ScreamingMeemie]

33. I would drive her if it wasn't so far away...

It's an hour bus ride. :hi:

[etherealtruth]

11. No

Our district has a very active PTC and raises money ... but not used for books or educational materials ... just "extras"

[philosophie_en_rose]

12. $20 art supply fee in advanced classes. No textbook fees.

I am appalled that any public school charges parents for textbooks.

The only fees at my school were for AP exams, extracurriculars, and advanced art supplies.

[Emit]

14. My daughter just completed her HS registration today

I had already paid her fees for this last May, as some of her courses required her to be active in her coursework over the summer. We paid about $125 for various fees, including admin costs, locker rental fees (optional), a health fee, yearbook fee (optional) and something toward book costs -- but, as far as books go, in some classes, the books are required to stay in the classroom because they do not have enough to go around. The students have to check them out if they need to complete an assignment, so I don't really know how the book fees are applied. I would actually pay more if they need more books.

[Viking12]

15. $45/ student in our WI district.

Fees are waived for students financially eligible for federal school lunch programs.

[Kber]

19. High property taxes cover almost all expenses

except some field trips, which are subsudised. Last year they took chartered busses to the Bronx Zoo for a cost of approx $15. If any parent had trouble coming up with the $15, a quiet call the the teacher took care of it.

But we are no better than you are in KS. If you couldn't afford the $75 fee, you'd have a hard time buying into my town and paying the taxes. Even renting is pretty expensive and you still end up paying taxes via higher rents. So, one way or another, we are making it difficult for working class families to give their kids a top rate education.

[Babette]

21. My step son goes to a public school just outside Chicago...

The high schools around here have bookstores (like college) which charge for ALL books. I was appalled when I found out about this practice when I moved here! If you are poor you might get a state loan. The current price list has some cheapies- required reading books for a dollar or more, and a lot of expensive books- a biology book for nearly $100. Every August we get hit with about $600 in book fees, lab fees, sports fees and such. The good news is that they will buy back the books, for less than half what you paid. It's also tough to get a high school kid to get off the couch and sell the books back.

[LostinVA]

26. What?!

[Babette]

31. And the property taxes there are insane....

There are people paying $500 a month just in property taxes. Right now there is a woman trying to protest by publishing a calendar with pictures of local women in the nude with strategically placed property tax bills!

[LostinVA]

32. Geez... that's crazy

[sandnsea]

22. Oh my god, NO

Why do people put up with this shit. I don't for the life of me understand it. We have the long-standing $5-$25 art and woodshop type fees, and a new extra-curricular fee which is quite expensive - but hell no there's not any sort of fee connected directly to education. And the kids can participate in art and woodshop without those fees to btw, they're just limited on the projects they can complete.

[WinkyDink]

23. Strikes me as illegal. There's a reason it's called a PUBLIC school.

That's why there are school TAXES.

I know some districts charge to participate in OPTIONAL activities, but textbooks aren't optional.

[City Lights]

27. They do. I don't have the breakdown of what fees are for textbooks,

yearbook, etc., but checkbook says $218 for the Middle School and $351.50 for High School. I'm in Lake County, north of Chicago.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. When will someone challenge this in court?

It is so illegal! I don't understand how they get away with it.

FYI, my youngest is now 23 and when I complained about book fees when he was in school, they waived them. :) So I gather they know it is wrong to charge these fees.

[PA Democrat]

36. My kids' western PA school district does not charge for textbooks.

The only school-related expenses we have other than the typical supplies(notebooks, pencils,etc.), yearbooks, cafeteria lunches, extra-curricular activities, is a small fee for material for a sewing project.

I wonder is there is a correlation between state, and local taxes and textbook fees? PA has a 6% state sales tax, a flat income tax of 3.07%, and local property taxes that vary from school district to school district.