How much do you pay in school fees?

My district is in a very low-income area of Denver on the north side. We could charge all the fees we want, but we wouldn't collect any. So we really can't charge anything. Conversely, our wealthier neighbors can charge enormous amounts to supplement their funding. Classic "rich get richer" scenario.

So I was wondering what you pay per child to attend a public school?

Include book fees, supplies fees, course fees, athletics fees. Do not include the cost of supply lists or clothing. This is just the cash you pay out to enroll.

I'll have to pay for a parking pass if he wants to drive. BTW, my son attends school in the richest district in Michigan. The reason he has to pay for a pass to park, is that the number of spots are limited. We are by no means wealthy. He attends out of district.

but for elementary school my kids went through an excellent public school system. In addition to local parcel taxes that added extra taxes to propery owners in the district there was always some kind of fundraiser going on - for sports, music, and extracurricular activities.

College was expensive. Both my kids went to public universities and it ran about $60,000 for each of them. Probably a bit less than half of that went to fees and supplies. The rest was for housing. They both worked part time so that paid for whatever extra stuff they wanted to have - car, insurance, trips.

All in all it was still a whole lot cheaper than private schools and they both got excellent educations.

provided for all, by the state, paid for by all through taxes.

All the way through graduate or law or medical school. What do they know that we don't?

in other words..

As early as 12 ( I think ) you start on the path towards your final goal. The top 10% go to the smart kid high school (gymnasium) and are bound for university. The others go towards Berufschule and Realschule where you can learn about being a middle manager or banker or a mechanic.

Do you feel comfortable with children that young being categorized?

I hope you aren't under the impression that everyone can go to college when the fancy takes them.

which teach a mix of vocational and college prep classes, pretty much the same as American high schools. Students can go on to the 12th year and take the Abitur (college entrance exam) from those schools.

Tuition fees for universities in Germany cost only 50-500 euros a semester ($70-700). If earlier streaming gets those kinds of results, I'm all for it. I wish like hell someone had put pressure on me earlier to define a career track. I might not have wasted nine years in college to get two useless degrees which render me unemployable.

Also students who go to Realschule and later change their minds can take tests to transfer to more challenging college-tracked programs. They aren't locked for life into any one program.

actually benefit from university instead of wasting a few years and countless financial resources pursuing a no-win path.

They have a version of that in Oregon, and then wonder why our test scores have plummeted since they implemented it. When you're only preparing 10% of your student body for higher learning, obviously the rest are going to be dumb as doorstops. 8th grade is way too young to decide which kids are going to succeed academically and which are going to flip burgers. You need a degree to be a middle manager or banker, or even a mechanic, these days.

will be paying off his student loans for law school up until he retires. Ugh,

school district.

A larger amount was the constant fund-raising to pay for things that were needed but not budgeted for.

And don't get me started on how much the teachers and other staff put in from their own pockets to cover shortfalls.

We are in a well-off district, but the fed and state money is disappearing. To us, it is simply an added expense that has only a minor impact. What the poorer districts have to struggle through with is criminal.

Even then, it's hard to ask the community for money when 80% are already on free lunch. Down in Denver, ONE SCHOOL can raise over $100,000 for their fundraiser. We're lucky to see $15,000 in a good year.

Athletic fees are $175 per student, per sport, with a family cap of $650.

AP exams are $86.00 per test.

By the time the school year is over, we'll have paid over $1600 for two kids to attend public high school.

have to pay your own physician), and other "optional" costs are mounting.

But when fees are assessed for books, supplies, etc. - that is what really hits the un-wealthy the hardest. What's next - rental from the library instead of lending.

As the old bumper sticker says - bake sales for schools but the Pentagon gets all it wants. that is fucked.

Our jock played varsity soccer, football, tennis, golf
and was in every AP class he could find:scared:

we paid through the nose for Club Soccer, but that was non school related.:)

and the soccer shoes...owwwww the shooooooes.. he had to have several kinds for different turf.. the ones for the polo field cost us almost $200 ( thousand pound horse hooves okay..kids with soccer shoes was somehow dangerous to the precious grass)

My kids are out now. It was stressful to keep them in and try to provide some sense of a normal high school life.

For bus fuel?

There is a $20 per student fee for all kids. Then there are workbooks, class fees, etc--for my HS daughter this year it was $164. In the grades, there is a list of supplies to purchase that usually runs $20-50 dollars.

However, we failed to pass a tax levy and now there are NO after-school activities (yes, that means no football, basketball or track, no drama club,etc. not even Honor Society)and if the smaller levy passes in November there will be pay-to-play on top of that.

The fees are waived for kids who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, but the schools could not afford to operate on tax dollars alone.

High School- $140 Middle School- $79 Grade School- $60 plus about $400 in school supplies... Not to mention new clothes and backpacks..

I usually spend between $1500 and $1800 per year, as a teacher for supplies that I need to survive in the classroom.

I guess an ignorant populace is much easier to control.

We pick up all sorts of stuff for classrooms - carpets, rocking chairs, little books, posters and pictures, colorful plastic tubs. Our teachers take it all. We just dropped of a large, hemmed carpet for Montessori on Friday. They have to have a home-like atmosphere, so area rugs and table lamps.

Is that pathetic or what? Sometimes I just get so angry. But I don't know what else to do.

Considering my paycheck, I pay way too much to keep the classroom going.

because my district charges $45 per pupil. However, they lower the fee for students on reduced-price lunches, and waive it entirely for students on free lunch. Our family qualifies for reduced lunch, so we paid $10 each. The district also charges lower fees for drivers' ed - we'll pay about $180 instead of $360 when my son takes it.

I live in a town of about 36,000, with about 20% of students on free/reduced lunch.

Here in Colorado, if we charge a fee, we have to show how it balances with whatever it's collected for. So if a school charges a book fee, they have to show it goes for books. Athletics has to go to athletics. Do they give you a list of what the fee is for?

and is collected by the school at registration. There are smaller fees - for instrument rental, for materials for a home ec. or shop project, accompanist fees, and so forth that are collected by the teachers during the school year.

I wrote a letter every year and said I was not going to pay them because it was a violation of my child's right to a free and appropriate public education.

And the school district always said okay.

Senior year they said well the yearbook fee is part of the fees. So I said well if my kid wants a yearbook I will buy it but I am not paying the other fees.

I have been waiting for years for some parent to file a lawsuit over these fees. I have never understood why they are legal.

And no we don't charge them in the urban district where I teach.

It sure makes the playing field really uneven. When you multiply $200 per kid at a 800-kid elementary - an extra $160,000 sure would come in handy. But I can't get that. It's discouraging.

are $88.

I thought that was called property tax. I paid nothing when my daughter enrolled for 1st grade this fall.

I have friends I work with who send their kids to other districts. One paid over $600 for her kid's public IB school. And that did NOT include athletics fees. And that was for ONE semester!

in areas with a broad tax-base and well to do families, there's money for the extras, but in other areas, schools are bare-bones, with parents having to make up the difference

Areas with lots of foreclosures also means no taxes being collected..

Oh well . . . maybe it's just me. I did brush this morning, honest.

Why should there be better education just based on where you live. Doesn't seem fair to me.

In effect, it takes money from the urban areas and gives more to the rural areas. On some levels that is logical, however, kids with major developmental or medical issues tend to concentrate in the large urban areas (where the medical or intervention services tend to be better) so the effect is that some of the rural districts end up with slightly better programs (though somewhat offset by the increase cost of transportation).

But within a district there is still significant disparity among high/low income areas.

Schools work around the equalization formula because private foundations can raise any amount of money for any school. Our schools' foundation raises at least a million a year in a district with less than 800 kids. Other larger schools struggle to raise even 100k for a school and with a lot more effort.

Bottom line is there will always be a disparity at public schools. They aren't well funded and different districts have different educational philosophies.

It's great and helpful, but not even on the same order of magnitude as others around us.

and somehow ends up with less money than other rural districts. I still don't understand why. Anyway, we just passed a levy to keep a pretty basic curriculum. It isn't all city money going to rural, believe me. Regardless, the real problem with budgeting in our schools is Salem and a lack of commitment to education.

fed taxes. dont know exactly how it works. a new middle school opened 4 yrs ago and it is the poor rich school. they dont have enough funding, they dont have enough lower income students to get federal funding and they lack compared to other schools in the district.

i donated 200 to library last year and will do for next three years because they dont have nearly enough books and they dont get nearly the money from district to supply

But the school's private foundation (a workaround to the state's equalization funding mechanism) requests $5k per year, starting in about November.

from each teacher.

When we left it to each teacher, you'd have one teacher requesting a million things, and the next one requesting little. It was a problem of equity. Also, you'd end up at the end of the year with a closet full of tissue boxes and paper towels donated by kids long gone. It wasn't fair for them not to get the benefit of their own supplies. So we stopped that.

that is what made such a huge list last couple years. every class, asking for different

cardstock. i dont even know what the hell that is but i know it isnt basic supplies kids should be supplying. school should provide that. what next, buy them computer paper? and then the oddity of some cant even be found in any store.

marble notebook 80 sheets 5x5 quad. went to office max and walmart, they never heard of marble in that size.

i know the supplies just have got to be in overabundance.

but something else i know. people that are having trouble just making it are not buying these things. so me buying excess (18 glue sticks cause of packaging) will replace a student that cant bring it to school

Maybe we're hurting ourselves by not soaking our parents like everyone else, but we just felt asking for that kind of thing (and it's amazing how wild the lists get) just wasn't fair. So our lists are really basic, and are strictly limited to ONE child. If parents want to help us stock up for others, we certainly take it. But they're not required to. It seems to work OK.

And it's way easier for us to find 5 reams of marble cardstock than parents. Sheesh.

Here in Colorado, we have equalization funding. It's a common system used across the country, with some minor tweaks here and there.

Basically, the state creates a formula that first determines how much a school district DESERVES per pupil. They may have some weighted factors such as size of district (smaller gets more money/ppl), number of at-risk students (generates more money), number of English Language Learners (more money), maybe a cost of living factor for high-cost areas (here we have Aspen, Telluride - places where teachers couldn't afford to live without some kind of teacherage allowance).

After the calculation is done, then the state looks to see where the money can come from. They first look to property taxes. They factor in every school district's mill levy and assessed valuation and find out how much they can raise. Here in Colorado, the levies are fixed unless people vote to raise them. Once they know this amount, the state "backfills" with state aid directly from the state general fund.

The resulting figure is around $7,500 per pupil. We're in the bottom ten for school funding.

But that's not even the real problem. In Colorado, as in most states, the funding formula allows districts to ask their citizens if they'll agree to funding another 25% on top of this, through a "mill levy override" election. (The cap used to be 20%, but in their wisdom, the Legislature raised that cap last year during our budget crunch.) And THIS is where all the action is. If you have a wealthier, educated, professional community, you are GUARANTEED to be able to raise another 25% in funding. If not . . . well, you get poorer and poorer. And by raising the cap, all they did was make the gap between rich and poor even greater.

So, here we are, with almost $2000 less per pupil than our neighbors, trying to pull off amazing reform, and not able to raise the funds to keep ourselves above water. To say it's frustrating is an understatement.

We needed a back pack and the school asked us to provide crayons and glue sticks. Not bad so far. She is super excited and I am nervous and slightly sad...they grow up so fast. My younger one is still in nursery school.

And the rows of backpacks are hilarious.

of work, love, teaching, nurturing ect....

lol

i am in giggle cause

been there done that, feel and know, lol.

just gigglin at you. still

you are so cute.

it is hard. i know

blast to you all. a whole world is opening up

I know she will do fine. She is way more outgoing and stubborn then I ever was. I was very shy at 5. She is much more strong willed then me but still...its a milestone for her. My husband and I laughed about it the other day. She was just a baby yesterday and next thing we know she will be in high school and then college. :cry: I will be fine, I have to do this again with my next daughter who is a year younger.

btw... per other thread, my kids eat fish. always have. all kinds. shrimp, lobster, crab, oysters and all manners of fish, wink

But they do eat all kinds of fruit. They are destined to become vegans I think. :)

i ahev also observed regularly adn consistently that little girls, even if you could get them to eat meat young, a couple years, they tend to go off it by three and stay off meat for two three years or more. lots of cheese and yogurts, ect.... but i have seen more little girls not eat meat.

But my oldest graduated this year. I paid quite a bit in various fees while she was in high school. Athletic/club fees and supply fees for some of her classes. Senior year was expensive - band camp, senior pictures, prom, all night party, etc. Obviously all of those are optional but it was worth it for us.

But there are also art, shop, choir, student id, a bunch of other fees. If you take some of these things out of the budget in order to focus on academics, other parents will get together and find a way to keep them in.

No book fees or course fees. No general supply fees; I don't know if our high school has a lab fee. If so, it isn't anywhere on the website, anyway. The general practice is to give out a supply list; some of the list will be for personal items, some for community supplies. No fees, just donations of stuff. Donations are voluntary. I supplied everything on my grandson's "community supply list last week, while his dad covered all the personal stuff. It amounted to about $50.00 out of pocket. That probably shouldn't count as a "fee," though, since it's a voluntary donation. Of course, even people who can't afford to pay it probably feel compelled to scrape at least some of it together, so perhaps it should count, after all.

We do have a FAN coordinator who provides supplies for anyone who needs them, if we know they need them. Pride is a factor.

Athletic fees? Yes, for any who compete; not for a basic PE class. They differ each year, and by each sport. They are intended to fund uniforms, coaches, referees, and buses. Sometimes there are fundraisers or sponsors to mitigate the fees, sometimes there are not. Fees average about $80.00 per student who participates, per sport. That's really extra-curricular, though, and no one is required to participate.

There are fees for field trips; at least, there were when we are allowed to take field trips. Which, since last fall and extending through this budget crisis, we are not. Those fees were variable, depending on the cost of the event. Anywhere from $3.00 to $100.00, and fundraisers and donations were also sought to help defer costs. It differs wildly from class to class, school to school, and grade to grade, so I'm not sure how to calculate it. I guess you could take the median; about $100.00. Of course, students who can't pay are scholarshipped; about 40% of them.

Outdoor school, for example. It takes place off campus and requires buses, so it's a "field trip." Fees amounted to about $60.00 per student to cover lodging, food, transportation, and the fees charged by the non-profit science organization that works with them. Those who could pay, paid. The rest were scholarshipped, using the proceeds from our year-round ice-cream sales fund raising.

Our field trips are not "extra-curricular," so I guess those fees would apply. If we were still allowed to take them. Even though we paid for buses ourselves through fees and fundraisers, they are off the table because the state subsidizes bus costs, but it takes the district a quarter to recoup the subsidy. When we call for buses, we are charged the cost minus the subsidy, and the district applies to recover the rest. No spending money that won't be here until later until the budget crisis is over.

I am old enough to have worked in schools that kept open supply cabinets; the district kept a warehouse of supplies, we let the secretary know what we needed, and she kept the supply room full. When we needed something, we just walked in and got it.

We supplied everything, students supplied nothing, and every student used the same stuff, so that no one had to feel like their stuff wasn't as "good" or "cool" as someone else's.

We paid for everything out of our classroom and site budgets, including athletics, field trips, etc..

I liked it that way.

I guess, adding up everything I included, a student could be paying $0, or could be paying $230, or even $390, if they played a different sport every trimester, and athletic fees are included.

We have a moratorium on field trips, too. Sad.

No outdoor school. Not trips to the Shakespeare festival.

And no trips to the state park 5 miles away, where previously we hiked, did rock climbing, and quite a bit of water and habitat science with the river. We used to have an annual water festival, with the whole school taking turns, a few classes at a time.

Museums, parks, the mountains, . . . it borders on perverse that so many of our kids have NEVER been into the mountains. Not once. And we live in Denver.

I was on a trip with my grandmother. After she got done with her business in Denver, she took me to a little mountain town in the Rockies: Grand Lake. It WAS a tiny little place then; I don't know what it's like now. My mom joined us, got two jobs cleaning motel rooms and working in the bar on main street, and we spent the summer.

I spent the summer running loose, and I became addicted to mountains. I've never been happy away from them since. The Rockies, the Sierras, the Cascades...I love them all.

What a travesty, that children in Denver live at the feet of the Rockies and don't get to experience them. :(

Our only fee is a $45 book deposit, which is refundable if the books are all returned (or can be rolled over to the following year). We tried running without it for a year or two and we had to replace a huge portion of our textbooks from loss and damage. Even though we don't keep the kids' money, not collecting the deposit ended up costing us thousands. :(

Some individual courses have course fees (5 dollars to cover art supplies). If the kids don't pay, they still get the supplies.

If we were in a wealthier school, we'd probably charge more, and end up with better equipment that allowed our kids to get a better education and more exposure to current technology (robotics classes, soldering equipment, there's a lot of stuff I'd love to do if I had the budget).

stuff the school needs. It isn't always painless for everyone, but it is worth it, since the school district is cutting back. They are very low on speech therapists and school nurses, too.

has had it since I was in school. In many places in the state it is more than $200. That doesn't include course fees, or athletic fees. Once you add those in, and supplies and clothing, I would guess that it is over $400 in many schools.