Batavia district may add 4 school fees, inflate existing ones

Five bucks here, five bucks there.

Fees for Batavia students to ride the bus, receive photocopied work sheets, participate in extracurricular activities and more could go up next year, under a plan discussed by the Batavia school board Tuesday night.

And parents may be asked to fork over money for four new fees.

The district has proposed an undetermined technology fee, a $3 fee for high school students to pay for an anti-plagiarism computer service that checks their papers, a $2 fee for juniors and seniors for the Web-based Naviance college search and application process system and a $10 activity fee for high school students to get in to all home regular-season athletic events, instead of charging them $2 a ticket per game.

The intramural sports fee at the middle school would remain at $10 per six-week session, and the parking fee at the high school would stay at $216.

While some of the fees could be raised, in some cases those same fees were lowered for this year. For example, an elementary child's registration fee, which is $75 now and could be $80 next year, was $80 in 2007-08. The district tries to set registration fees based on the actual costs of consumable items used, such as the photocopier lease and paper costs for reproducing instructional materials, and the cost of textbooks.

Board members discussed the district's philosophy about charging fees. Trustee Matt Winkle said he disagrees with charging fees for things that are required of students, such as mathematics, English and science classes at the high school.

"I don't know what I paid to go to school as a kid, but I guarantee it wasn't much," he said.

Trustee Kathleen Roberts reminded him, however, that the district was sued by a resident in the mid-1990s over its fees, and won because it had a documented way to justify the fees. "You've got to cover the costs one way or another," she said - either through fees, property taxes or by cutting other areas of the budget.

In what may be good news for some parents, the driver-education fee will remain at $250. The district had asked the state board of education for permission to charge up to $400, in an extension of a five-year waiver, but was denied. The state set a limit of $250.

The fees will be voted on Jan. 27.