Many area families will have to pay two or three times the amount they paid last year for their kids to participate in school sports and other activities as part of districts’ efforts to cut costs.

For the affected districts, the average increase is more than 100 percent.

At Beavercreek, Huber Heights, Valley View and Vandalia-Butler school districts — each of which recently announced multimillion-dollar cuts to stem widespread budget deficits — costs will be higher for the 2012-13 than they were this past school year.

Fees at Tipp City Schools, another district in financial distress, will jump if the district’s levy doesn’t pass in August.

“I believe it’s presenting hardships for some of our families, and preventing some of them from being able to play sports,” said William Kirby, Huber Heights superintendent. “This is not what public education is about.”

Pay-to-participate fees apply to various high school and middle school sports and activities, including marching band, flag corps, cheerleading, speech and debate, Science Olympiad, Winter Guard, and many more.

The Dayton Daily News examined the cost for sports specifically, because they are offered by each of these districts and their cost is the highest among each district’s pay-to-participate fees.

“The concern always is that you may cause kids not to be able to participate, and we want as many kids in our programs as possible,” said John Kronour, Tipp City superintendent. “But we also have to balance our budget.”

At Huber Heights City Schools, high school and middle school students are seeing their fees increase from $125 per sport for 2010-11, to $175 in 2011-12, to $225 for next school year. There also will be a family cap of $550.

“Our revenue has fallen back to what it was in 2006, and costs increase every year,” Kirby said. “That’s why we’re having to do these drastic cuts, and increase these fees.”

That increase is still shy of Beavercreek City Schools’ change for next year. The largest Greene County school district will see its costs per sport triple.

According to Superintendent Nick Verhoff, each Beavercreek High School sport will increase from $100 to $300, each middle school sport from $70 to $200, and the family maximum fee will go from $250 to $750.

“We’ve alerted our support groups for each of our sport teams and asked if they are able to step up,” Beavercreek Athletic Director Jim Smerz said. “We want every kid who wants to come out for our sport teams to be able to participate.”

In the Dayton area, Springboro Community City Schools has the highest area pay-to-participate fees at $356 per high school sport, and that is after the district reduced fees by 20 percent last year. For 2011-12, the cost was $445.

Beavercreek — like Huber Heights, Northmont, Mad River, Tipp City and other districts — has mechanisms in place to help families deal with these costs.

The Beavercreek Athletic Booster Club can assist families, the Huber Heights Athletic Foundation provides a way for parents to volunteer to offset costs, and families in Tipp City and Northmont can apply for waivers or discounts.

If Tipp City’s levy passes, its fees will stay at $100 per high school sport and $75 per middle school sport, with a family maximum of $350; if the levy fails, the fees will increase to $150 and $100, respectively, with a family cap of $500.

Kronour said the 2011-12 school year was the first year Tipp City implemented pay-to-participate fees, and the district did not see a dropoff in participation.

Smerz said in his few years at Beavercreek, he had not encountered families who could not participate due to the costs. But, when he worked at Fairborn City Schools, it was a financial burden for some.

At Vandalia-Butler City Schools, 2012-13 will be the first year in recent memory that the district has implemented pay-to-participate fees. As of Tuesday, the amount of these fees had not been announced.

There are area districts that don’t have pay-to-participate fees; they include Dayton, Oakwood, Trotwood-Madison, Miamisburg and Troy.

Emily Martin, whose family is from Miamisburg, said she is shopping for a house and these fees play a role in where she hopes to settle.

“We have an 8-year-old boy, and we’re not looking at buying in any district that doesn’t rank highly academically and that charges pay-to-play fees,” Martin said. “We pay our taxes, and we just ask that the district allocate funds for sports. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.”

Miamisburg Superintendent Greg Whitehead said he is pleased that his district has avoided implementing the fees, and he doesn’t want to discourage kids in any way from participating in sports or other activities.

“But we also see that, financially, (having those fees) can mean the possibility of saving a teacher’s job,” he said. “It’s tough when you challenge families with $400, $500 or $600 bills just for athletics, but we all know that’s a possibility for any district.”

Smerz said if Beavercreek or any district continues to raise fees, they will lose athletes.

He cited what happened at Medina City Schools, which raised its fees from $150 per athlete to $660 per sport after its levy failed in 2009. In response, the district reported a 10 percent decline in athletic participation in the first year and a 21 percent decrease through this spring.

Medina has since reduced its fees to $330 per sport.

Smerz said he is not in favor of participation fees increasing on the whole, since he is an advocate for kids being involved in extracurriculars.

“I think it enhances the educational experience for all of those kids; the benefit of being a part of those far outweighs the costs,” Smerz said. “But it’s better to have fees than not to have sports at all.”