Participation fees going up for Batavia students

Batavia public school students will pay more to play sports and participate in clubs this fall.

The Batavia school board this week raised sports fees $64 per player per sport for high school and middle school teams. That's an 85 percent increase for middle school students and 71 percent for the high school athletes. Middle school players will pay $139, and high schoolers $154.

The board also decided to charge students who participate in extracurricular music and drama ensembles in the elementary schools $25 per activity. The board raised those fees by $45 for middle school and high school students, to $120 and $135.

Intramural sports fees were raised to $20 per six-week session.

The board also added a $25 fee for high school clubs that are not service-oriented.

Board member Jack Hinterlong had proposed a five-tier fee schedule, based on the cost of the activity per student. He calculated activities range from $35.82 per member for clubs such as the bass fishing team at the high school to $462.68 per member for large-team sports such as track, soccer and football at the high school.

Administrators recommended against the five-tier system for several reasons.

First, they believe having standardized fees provides more equitable access to activities for students.

Secondly, the cost data is incomplete, according to Kris Monn, finance director. The district implemented its current cost-accounting system only a year ago. Some of the costs are paid by nondistrict entities such as booster clubs, and some of the costs are assigned to different areas of the budget. For example, music for elementary choirs is charged to school accounts, not the extracurriculars account, and field costs of football, baseball and track are not part of the data, but greens fees for golf are. The number of assistant coaches fluctuates year to year depending on how many students sign up for a sport. Monn would prefer to have a three-year average.

The fee proposals came as the school board works on avoiding a deficit in the district's 2010-11 budget, which takes effect July 1 and must be approved by Sept. 30.