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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > August > 17 > Entry
Districts send collectors after parents
On Thursday, my colleague Chris Magan has a very interesting story on the front page of the DDN that I thought we might discuss.
Magan set out to learn how much parents around the Miami Valley pay in school fees. Along the way, he discovered that some districts were hiring collectors to go after parents for the $35 to $100 student fees that families are expected to pay each year.
The cost of annual fees have been growing for parents in recent years, not to mention the long list of supplies that kids are now expected to bring to school on the first day in many districts.
What do you think about the idea of sending collectors after parents who don’t pay these fees?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Laura
August 21, 2007 7:05 PM | Link to this
Cec: You bring up a good point about the waste of trees for textbooks. However, few students in Dayton would have the capability of using a CD. Another option would be to download them all to a website as college classes often do now. I suspect in the near future the majority of schools will go to some system such as those instead of paper textbooks.By cec
August 21, 2007 12:45 AM | Link to this
I swear, there goes the Board again spending money that they don’t have to collect money. Can’t the Board just leave collecting money up to the school Pricipal and their staff? As a parent and tax payer, I do understand the difficulty of getting fees paied since my child attends Stivers the magnet fees went up from $100. to $140. not to say lab, locker,and Band locker fees. I do beleive I’m looking at close to $200. for the year not including all the other stuff we have to buy for our kids for school, and not to mention the 60 to 80 lbs. of books they need to carry on their backs. Let Percy and the other Board members lug that around for a day and they might look at tex books on CD’s. Cost wise it could be cheaper and save afew trees.By Caroline
August 18, 2007 2:28 PM | Link to this
We send the wrong attitude to parents and students if we require them to not pay for anything. In Dayton, the students expect the teachers & school to supply them with everything. Yes, this is while they come in with a different pair of sneakers for each day of the week. DPS already doesn’t require hardly any fees from their parents. They can’t require it for field trips or sports. However, some students and parents think it’s the teacher’s duty to supply them with paper and pencil. I’m sorry, but the majority of parents can afford a 20 cent pencil.By Laura
August 17, 2007 8:36 PM | Link to this
Will, if you are referring to Dayton as the poor district, Dayton cannot require parents to pay for workbooks or school fees because the entire district is poor. We can ask parents to buy supplies but cannot hold that against the student. In the case of paying for field trips, depending on the building principal’s interpretation, it is usually the policy to permit all students to attend regardless of whether they pay. The comment from “Oh, please” about the shoes is true even in Dayton. Children frequently come to school wearing expensive coats, carrying cell phones and able to buy whatever the school might be selling as a fundraiser, but can’t seem to find the money for crayons and pencils. I also really like the idea of having parents do “volunteer work” in exchange for the fees. I don’t have a problem with parents paying some fees. My parents paid fees for 3 children and we were poor. They just had a different attitude; that you paid your bills first and then bought the things you wanted.By Will
August 17, 2007 4:00 PM | Link to this
It’s good to see the “how expensive kids shoes are argument” trotted out in regards to school finance. If you agree with the idea of school fees then you should have no problems with collection agencies going after money owed to schools. Personally I disagree with the concept. Especially when we are serving a poor district.By Mary
August 17, 2007 1:03 PM | Link to this
I think the associated article and lists in the Neighbors section was even more important by showing the disparity in dollars collected from families for classroom versus sports. It shows school districts are sticking parents and students for fees as a cash flow while diverting greater amounts of education tax dollars to support fewer students in after school activities. That is the real fiscal crime - fraudulent use of tax dollars. Give some parents those same tax dollars collected for their child’s education and then they could afford to stay home and educate their child themselves.By Oh please!
August 17, 2007 12:52 PM | Link to this
Wouldn’t it cost more to hire collectors then the cost of the fees? I say if there is no way the parents can come up with the fee money for their child, require that they do so many hours of volunteer work to make up the difference. I guarantee they will be finding that fee money! The child is the one to suffer here. They have to listen to their teacher constantly hound and threaten to remove them from whatever activity they are not paying to participate in. Come on people the fees are not that much. Some of the shoes and jeans these kids are wearing cost more then a years worth of fees. My advice- Pay your fees first then buy the school clothes!