Some good $$$ news for D300

Partial relief is coming for families in Community Unit School District 300 regarding athletic user fees.

High school students in District 300 pay a $150 user fee per sport unless the student's family qualifies for the federal sponsored school lunch program, in which case the fee is waived. The user fee is $75 at the middle school level.

If a student competes in two high school sports, the family pays $300. A three-sport athlete pays $450.

The fees, according to District 300 chief financial officer Dr. Cheryl Crates, "go into the general fund and offset the cost of sports, but the district puts another $1 million and then some into sports. The fees don't pay for everything; they just offset the cost and there is no one-to-one correspondence.

"In other words," Crates added, "we don't put revenues into one little bucket and expenses into another. Travel is a big piece of it, athletic uniforms, balls, referees and coaches."

User fees can mount quickly for families with multiple children participating in athletics.

The Dundee-Crown wrestling program, for instance, has triplets competing this season. The cost to the family just to compete was $450, not to mention the additional purchases of wrestling shoes and other necessary items.

Jim Lococo of Algonquin grew up in a nearby school district that did not charge user fees to participate in sports. As a parent of two D-C athletes, he became a member of the Dundee-Crown $900 club.

Jim's son Jack, now a sophomore at Augustana, and his daughter Alex, a senior at Dundee-Crown, both competed in three sports throughout high school. In the two years when Jack and Alex were in high school concurrently, the family paid $900 a year in user fees.

Even for a dedicated supporter of D-C athletics who can afford the fees like Lococo, the cost is a concern.

"It just seems like it's an astronomical number," Lococo said. "Then you've got fundraisers every year for each kid, so it's 20 bucks here, 20 bucks there."

Good news for Lococo, whose youngest daughter, Lauren, is an Algonquin Middle School sixth-grader involved in volleyball, soccer and basketball, could come as soon as the next D300 School Board meeting later this month. At that meeting the board is expected to approve a district committee's recommendation to establish fee ceilings per athlete and per family.

"They're working on capping the fees next year for athletics," Dr. Crates said this week. "What they're hoping to do is, obviously, not raise that fee but to cap it at two sports per year per student and no more than four sports fees per family for a max of four fees per family.

"That's the hope. It doesn't seem to have met much resistance so far, but it's moving it's way through."

The expected changes are being recommended by a district committee that listened to the concerns of district athletic directors, who, in turn, received input from their coaches.

If approved, families with two, three-sport athletes like the Lococos would pay a maximum of $600 instead of $900.

The board will also vote on a second change that is expected to be approved. Under the current system fees are waived for children from families that qualify fully for the federal school lunch program. However, students whose families qualify partially for the federal school lunch program still pay the full $150 user fee.

The district committee will recommend to the board that user fees for partial qualifiers be waived as well.

The two changes in fees would come at an important time for Dundee-Crown High School in particular.

D-C is on the Illinois academic watch list and is, therefore, undergoing a state-mandated restructuring. One of the recommendations of the restructuring team, according to veteran Dundee-Crown teacher and wrestling coach Al Zinke, is to get as many students involved with extracurricular activities as possible because multiple studies have shown involvement in extra-curriculars equates to better grades.

The turnout for popular sports like basketball and football was mostly unaffected at Dundee-Crown this year despite the recession, Zinke said. However, he contends participation at the lower levels of his "non-glamor" sport is on the decrease.

He claims some potential athletes, unsure whether they would enjoy the rigorous sport of wrestling, did not try out due to the $150 user fee. Some families simply can't afford to spend $150 during an economic crisis to find out if their son really likes to wrestle, he said.

A member of the Dundee-Crown Hall of Fame as well as the Illinois Wrestling Coaches Association Hall of Fame, Zinke said roster numbers are down at the freshman, sophomore and junior varsity levels of the D-C wrestling program this season. Last week Dundee-Crown had to pull out of a junior varsity match at Harvard "because I didn't have enough wrestlers to send," Zinke said.

There are less than 30 wrestlers in the proud D-C program this year, down from the high forties two years ago. Years with 50 and 60 wrestlers were not uncommon.

The same trends are reflected at the middle school level, according to the D-C varsity coach.

"We have middle schools that are quite large, but Carpentersville Middle School has 20 wrestlers in the seventh and eighth grade combined," Zinke said. "Algonquin Middle School has 16, seventh and eighth combined. Dundee Middle School has 16 combined. There are 14 weight classes. Westfield, our biggest middle school in the district, was in the fifties last year. They're in the thirties this year.

"I contribute a lot of it to the fee. Some of that could be due to coaching changes, but the Westfield and Dundee Middle School coaches have remained the same.

"Same coaches, lower numbers."

D300 coaches have been tasked by the district to collect these user fees, making them the heavy in what can become an awkward situation between coach and athlete.

Zinke sat at his office computer last week and counted 14 e-mails he has received this season from District 300 bookkeeping regarding unpaid user fees by his wrestlers.

"They all say 'You've got to talk to them, you've got to talk to them,' " Zinke said of the e-mails. "I don't think it's a coach's job to collect fees. Then it finally came down to a deadline. If they didn't pay, they didn't play."

The deadline is a new wrinkle added this school year. If the user fee deadline passes without payment, the athlete is ineligible until payment is made. Two Dundee-Crown freshman wrestlers quit this season because they couldn't come up with the fee, Zinke said.

A lifetime in public education has made Al Zinke a realist. He said he understands that District 300 - which still has the lowest tax levy in Kane County and still spends the least per student - isn't in a position to eliminate user fees. He accepts that the pre-user fee days of the late 1980s, when 80 boys came out for wrestling, are long gone.

But he does offer an idea that would match the restructuring team's goal of encouraging participation in sports.

"If they really want to get kids involved, have a fee structure where if you're involved your freshman year, there's no fee," Zinke said. "In this economic time every questionable kid is a no. Make it so they can try it, can get involved.

"Your sophomore year a fee, maybe $100 if we need to do that. It should be an escalating fee. That way you haven't made it cost prohibitive and any questionable youngster can try it.

"If we want to get kids more involved like the restructuring team says, well, this makes sense."

Zinke's plan would call for upperclassmen to pay higher fees to make up for the cost of lower or entirely waived fees for freshmen.

Whether such a plan is financially feasible is for the monetary experts at D300 Central Administration to ultimately decide. But this is a plan brought forth by a man who has worked in the district trenches for more than two decades, a man who has dedicated his life to shaping the lives of young people for the better. He's not blowing smoke.

On the precipice of retirement, Zinke recognizes trends in the district when he sees them. He cares enough to offer a solution to what he sees as a problem rather than merely criticize a policy on his way out the door.

District 300 has already taken two proactive, positive steps that should help stem the decrease in participation that is setting off Zinke's alarm bell. He thinks his plan is worth considering. At the very least it's a good place to continue the discussion.

Partial relief of fees is a good start, D300. Now, let's keep looking at ways to involve every potential athlete who wants to be involved.

jfitzpatrick@dailyherald.com