By Shannon Gilchrist
COLUMBUS – Both the current and incoming New Albany superintendents recommend that the school board cut $200 from athletics fees.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
A petition to lower the fees has 965 signatures, and scores of parents and students showed up a Monday board meeting calling for a reduction or a cap.
This comes at a time when there has been talk in the General Assembly about limiting or banning pay-to-participate fees, and school boards wrestle with this issue. Who should foot the bill? Should it be a user fee, or is it in a community’s interest to fund sports and other activities because they benefit the education process?
Sports participation at New Albany has dropped by more than 12 percent since November 2014, when the school board, responding to a levy failure, implemented a $625 fee for high-school athletes per sport and $425 for middle-schoolers per sport.
“If you ask a college counselor … he or she will tell you, a well-rounded student is a better student, not only in school but for life,” said New Albany parent Michael Klein, who started the change.org petition.