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Monday, August 22, 2005

Law - Illinois parents face similar requirements for more school "fees"

Related to the ILB entry this morning on school textbook "fees" is a two-part series in the Daily Herald (serving suburban Chicago).

Yesterday's story was headlined "School fees rise as taxpayer support dwindles." Some quotes:

Parents who challenge fees find they have few avenues of appeal. About 1,000 families at South suburban Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park learned the hard way that fees are not optional when the district sent their unpaid bills to a collections agency.

Illinois courts haven’t offered much recourse, either. In 1970 the state Supreme Court upheld school districts’ rights to charge for textbooks. A 1973 Appellate Court decision held schools could charge for the use of textbooks and towels.

School code requires districts to waive fees for children who are eligible for the federal free lunch program.

Illinois also allows school boards to establish fees for instructional materials, field trips, extracurricular activities, equipment and supplies.

And they do.

Though school boards must secure voter approval to raise taxes, they can act unilaterally when imposing fees.

“These fees are a supplemental tax imposed by school systems. I do not get to vote on this tax,” said Doug Jaffray, whose children attend Indian Prairie School District 204, in DuPage County. * * *

When residents overwhelmingly rejected the proposed tax hike, the school board raised band fees (from $40 to $300), athletic fees (from $100 to $200 for varsity sports, from $50 to $100 for in-house teams) and registration fees (from $60 to $115 for first through fourth grades and $140 for fifth through eighth).

After its $86 million capital projects referendum failed this spring, St. Charles Unit District 303 instituted a technology fee for all students and raised the driver’s education fee to $200. The fee increases were expected to generate about $338,000 in new revenue.

Some criticize school fees as taxation by other means.

“When referendums fail, it’s a lot easier to stick it to the parents with activity fees than to find inefficiencies in the budget,” said Greg Blankenship of the Illinois Policy Institute, a free-market oriented think tank. “I’d argue it’s a form of regressive indirect taxation. It’s going to impact the people who most need the services.”

Participation barrier

Fees, a nuisance to most, become a barrier to participation for some.

After District 26 changed its fee structure, band enrollment dropped 50 percent and fewer students tried out for pay-to-play teams. Low turnout forced the middle school to cancel in-house basketball.

In neighboring District 3, parents balked when the school board increased fees to $200 and $300 per activity. A subsequent districtwide survey found participation in all but two sports would dip too low to a field a team.

Today's story is titled "Line between fees and tuition ‘as clear as mud’". Both stories were reported by Emily Krone. After quoting the Illinois Constutition (“The state shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. Education in public schools through the secondary level shall be free.”), Krone writes:
In school districts across the state, parents pay band fees, book fees, lab fees, tech fees, supply fees, athletic fees and — just for showing up — registration fees.

“It’s not really as free and appropriate education as we’re supposed to provide,” acknowledged Ron Kazmar of Students First Illinois, an advocacy group for increased state funding of public schools.

Illinois courts have ruled school fees do not violate the free schools provision of the 1970 state constitution.

Courts have held that schools may charge participation fees so long as they do not charge “tuition.”

But school boards have found the line between fees and tuition is murky — and often arbitrary.

Registration fees, for example, do not equal tuition in Illinois. Neither do fees for such mandatory materials as textbooks and science labs. Nor do fees for extracurricular activities — even those that bear a striking resemblance to curricular activities.

Elusive definitions

The confusion over band fees in Cary Elementary District 26 illustrates just how murky the distinction between fees and tuition can be.

A lawyer from the state board of education advised District 26 that its band fees amounted to tuition because they covered the salary and benefits of the band teachers — prohibited under Illinois school code.

A lawyer for the district, however, told the board the fees were legal if band was an extracurricular activity.

The board, then, scrambled to determine — a month after the school year ended —whether band was or was not part of the previous year’s curriculum.

Ultimately it labeled band extracurricular because it met mostly before school and did not count toward a student’s grade point average.

Thus, District 26 charged parents for a school-sponsored activity taught by district employees hired exclusively to teach band. But according to Illinois School Code, the district did not charge tuition.

“It’s about as clear as mud,” Andrea Gorla, the district’s chief financial officer, said at the time.

Other school districts are walking the same fine line. In Fox River Grove District 3, band is considered curricular and is free, but jazz band, which meets after school, costs $50.

Gorla said she has fielded calls from several administrators in other districts concerned their fees might violate the free schools provision.

The fee structure of Fox Valley districts would violate school code in most states.

Illinois is one of only nine states without a free textbooks provision. Forty-one states and Washington, D.C., prohibit districts from charging fees for the use of textbooks.

Indiana doesn't have a free textbooks provision. But Indiana's Constitution of 1851 guarantees "a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all." The Court of Appeals ruled in Nagy last year (now vacated pending the Supreme Court's decision, as discussed in the earlier entry today) that a $20 activity fee imposed by the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. violated the Indiana Constitution.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 22, 2005 03:46 PM
Posted to General Law Related