Marple Newtown’s Activity Fee

Marple Newtown School District is going to start charging students a fee to participate in after-school activities. The idea is to save tax dollars.

So rather than going after the special interests that wildly inflate the cost of education, the powers-that-be figure on going after a group they feel won’t raise a fuss they can’t handle — namely students who’d rather play a sport or music or take the stage than goof off in front of a TV or an X-box, and their parents.

Granted taxes can’t be raised — especially property taxes in this economy.

So what should a school board do?

Well they can ask the faculty and administration for give-backs (cue laughter). Ask the teachers to coach and direct without the extra-curricular pay, for instance, sort of like Little League coaches. (cue more laughter).

What else? How about passing a resolution demanding our legislators exempt school districts from the prevailing wage law for construction and renovation? (cue more laughter)

The prevailing wage requirement and other construction mandates hike costs up to 40 percent — IIRC — over what a business owner would pay.

Quick quiz MN math students: What’s 40 percent of the $65 million slated to go to your new high school?

And if you really want to control spending — and remove the not-so-good -teachers that afflict every district — start demanding that the state change the law to let school boards replace teachers when their contracts end.  More than enough money would be found to cover after-school activities.

And education would improve.

One thought on “Marple Newtown’s Activity Fee”

  1. I’m surprised at the lack of comments, perhaps that is what happens when the school board does something in the summer since I’m JUST learning of this fee at the start of school. More surprised that we’ve raised taxes (http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/06/29/news/doc4a482fd4166e9274663196.txt), removed a couple expensive programs (hockey for instance) and our children…many of the ones that give MNSD a good grade are being penalized with this activity fee. You mean they can’t find $65,000 for activities?

    I can’t help but think this is money not proportionately distributed across the programs and not seemingly part of any budget that will be tracked. As it is they are targeting the groups that do their own fund raising for much of their activities and now a fine is imposed too. Try getting us to buy magazines, candy etc after this. I’ll be noting the names that voted for this.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.