As students prepare for Monday’s first school bells, many parents already hit by the crumbling economy are reeling from hundreds of dollars spent on supplies and fees they believe ought to be covered by a “free” public education.
“Money-wise, it’s harder than Christmastime,” said Megan Kirkes, a stay-at-home mother of five children, four of whom attend Montgomery County Public Schools. Kirkes’ husband recently was laid off from his job as a credit counselor, crippling the family’s income and forcing the family to shut off their phone service.
“They want us to buy tissue, paper towels, baggies, hand sanitizer gel, fine-tipped markers, white-board markers, binders, and there’s a $25 activities fee and a $40 snack fee — that one’s new,” Kirkes said, going through a litany of expected costs at Germantown’s Ronald McNair Elementary.
Ted Willard, a vice president for the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, said many schools don’t communicate well enough that many supplies, especially those for general use, are optional. And now more than ever, he said, schools and PTAs need to advertise where help is available for cash-strapped families.
At the high school level, expenses are higher. Janis Sartucci, a Winston Churchill High School parent, was expected to pay $1,120 last year for her son’s choir class, including $210 for a costume and $549 for a trip to New York City. “The response was that ‘we should have known this was the way the class was run,’” Sartucci said.
Another parent collected a list of dozens of 2007-08 student fees from several Montgomery County high schools, revealing an accounting workbook for $36, a Japanese workbook for $85, and a photography class fee of $40, in addition to owning a manual camera.
“There’s no one [financial] source for needs such as this,” Silver Spring’s Springbrook High School Principal Michael Durso said in an e-mail. Teachers, parents and administrators try to be as accommodating as possible, he said, but “since our opportunities for vending resources have been handled centrally, there are minimal funds available to deal with these situations.”
The costs have led parents to question the legality of charging fees for supplies and activities necessary for their children’s education.
“For some families, paying the small fee for the high quality education that Virginia provides is not a big deal, but for many families that live at the margins, extra costs for several children can really break the budget,” said Angela Ciolfi, an attorney with Charlottesville’s Legal Aid Justice Center.
Ciolfi’s JustChildren program recently released a report titled “The Price of a Free* Public Education,” finding that only Loudoun County reported charging zero fees to its students. Even there, however, a school official told Ciolfi’s team that fees would be on the table this year to combat a near-$50 million budget cut.
The report compelled the Virginia Department of Education to remind its schools that fees are acceptable only when not required for school enrollment.
“Our position is if it’s a part of the regular school day and kids are getting graded and they need something for a class, that would be a condition of enrollment,” Ciolfi said.
In Maryland, parents recently brought the issue to the attention of the state attorney general’s office. A response from the lead counsel to the state’s department of education advised pursuing the issue with the local superintendent, but included documents supporting state regulations, stating “anything directly related to a school’s curriculum must be available to all without charge.”
Parents are hoping the issue is addressed at Thursday’s school board meeting in Rockville.
Schools, however, find themselves caught between paltry funding for supplies and higher-than-expected enrollments. School systems, principals and PTAs work diligently in the fall to seek out help for families falling behind, but this year has proven especially difficult.
Montgomery County distributed nearly 15,000 pounds of free school supplies at a drive in late July, up from about 9,000 pounds last year, according to school officials. Several schools in the county have partnered with groups like Discovery Channel and NBC Channel 4 to receive backpacks and materials for each student.
But Kirkes got word of the help too late. “I don’t know who gets that stuff,” she said. “I don’t know where it goes.”
School fees
In Loudoun County, public schools students will pay nothing for textbooks and classroom fees, but in Montgomery County Public Schools they could pay more than $200, depending on the school and the classes. And while districts work hard to accommodate needy families, some parents don’t know help is available. Here are some costs they could face:
(Data compiled using projected 2007-08 student fees in Montgomery County):
» AP World History: $130 textbook
» AP Geography: $91 textbook
» Honors French: $32 workbook
» AP Latin: $26 workbook
» Food Trends: $25 for groceries
» 6th Grade World Studies: $10 atlas
» Science classes: $12 average lab fee
