The Prince William County schools superintendent is proposing a pay-to-play option for middle-school sports after parents balked at his proposal to cut them from next year’s budget.
“At the overwhelming request of middle school parents, we will ask them to support middle school interscholastic sports with a $50-per-sport participation fee, as is already proposed at the high school level,” Steven Walts wrote in a letter addressed to students, parents and staff.
The fee would generate an estimated $292,335 next year, according to his proposed budget for fiscal 2010.
The fee would be $25 for students in the reduced-price lunch program and free to students with a free lunch, he added. Additionally, Walts said the county’s public schools would move forward on a plan to add middle school intramural sports, which were proposed to replace interscholastic sports. Over the next year, a task force will examine both programs, he wrote.
An online petition to “Save Prince William Middle School Sports” had scored more than 980 signatures as of Friday, after a little over a week on the Web.
Nancy Klimavicz, of Nokesville, said she was satisfied that the group was able to use the petition — and other feedback to school officials — to force a change.
“I think [Walts’ proposal] is just fine,” she said. “I just don’t want to see the program canceled,” she said, adding that she would rather pay for the sports than not have them at all.
In a letter to the school board dated Feb. 12, Klimavicz stressed the role middle school sports have played in the lives of students on travel soccer teams she has coached.
“These middle school kids go home to empty houses in rough neighborhoods,” she wrote. “Middle school sports keep some of them engaged and out of trouble. We’ve lost enough kids in this county to gangs, drugs and alcohol. Please don’t sacrifice any more. You may save a few dollars now, but we will ALL pay for it in many ways later.”
She also wrote that her daughter Julie — currently in 10th grade — achieved higher grades in middle school when playing soccer and running track than when she wasn’t playing sports.
The original proposal to convert middle school sports to intramurals would net an estimated $383,250 in savings a year.
