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Steve McLaren has a daughter who plays three sports, including hockey, and a son who is a rising freshman and also plays three sports, which means he could be paying as much as $4,450 in athletic fees next year if the School Committee sticks to its plan to increase fees.
“If the people at this table feel comfortable with me paying $4,450 on top of my current property taxes to have my two children participate in sports, I think you’re wildly misguided,” he told the School Committee during a recent public hearing on athletic fees.
The School Committee has floated a plan that would increase basic athletic fees by $200, taking the price to play from $400 per sport to $600, with no family cap. But if your child plays a sport that includes utilizing an outside facility such as hockey, swimming, golf, tennis or skiing, the fees take an even steeper jump.
The aim is to close a $246,000 deficit.
Like McLaren, one parent said she had two skiers, which means they’d be paying the base fee plus they’d have to pick up the cost of ski passes, which in the past the school had paid for. She also pointed out the transportation is only provided for the skiers on race day.
When it comes to practices, the parents foot the bill for the bus. Plus those same kids would be playing three additional sports. This parent wondered what the School Department was paying for transportation for all sports and how many coaches they’re paying for over and above what is required.
School officials said they would post the information online.
She also took issue with the constant references to the failed $11 million override, which had it passed would have rendered the need for a fee increase moot.
“I think it’s hard for parents to keep hearing about the override, we have to move forward,” she said. “It’s hard to hear that as a justification.”
McLaren echoed her sentiment, stating the School Department shouldn’t have counted on the override to fund the current budget.
“Because we never had that money, so we didn’t lose money … it shouldn’t have been in the budget and it shouldn’t have been planned for,” he said.
While School Committee member Stefanie Mnayarji said they looked at peer towns while building the proposed fee schedule, McLaren called Winchester’s numbers absurd relative to other towns. He said Lexington has a family cap of $825, Belmont’s cap, including hockey, is $1,005 and Arlington’s athletic fees are $0.
For towns with similar demographics, Concord/Carlisle’s cap is $900 and Norwell’s family cap is $1,500, including hockey, he said.
But McLaren’s question was if the committee also considered imposing a fee for students who belong to clubs and art programs.
Mnaryarji said they are exploring what she called a club pass.
“We don’t want to raise these fees,” she added. “We wanted the override to pass to support our budget, but our budget involves union contracts and legal obligations to students that has to be serviced first, and that is our priority.”
McLaren however, suggested that perhaps cutting staff was the answer.
“You’re making an assumption right now that every staffed position is necessary and providing value, which I don’t know that it is,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s not, but I don’t know what it is. What about the arts? Why are we favoring certain constituencies within the community versus others? Meaning, why are sports families footing a substantial bill, and someone who’s in chorus or in the play isn’t adding anything to their tab.”
Director of Finance and Operations Andrew Marron said the district pays roughly $80,000 a year in stipends for clubs at the McCall Middle School and the high school. The clubs fundraise to cover supply fees and other cost, he added.
School Committee member John Bellaire also pointed out that 32.5 positions have been eliminated, K - 12, with, what he called a disproportionate share coming from the central office.
McLaren also took issue with the fees being applied across the board. He argued junior varsity hockey practices twice a week and has maybe one game while varsity hockey practices five times a week and plays two games. He called it unfair the price is the same for both levels.
Mnaryarji called that good feedback and said it was something they could look into.
Dahlia Fetouh said when her daughter was a freshman, she pushed herself to try a new sport and joined the Nordic ski team and the ultimate Frisbee team.
“And those decisions had a profoundly positive impact on her trajectory,” Fetouh said, adding “those experiences shaped who she is, and I believe also shaped how colleges viewed her.”
But if the proposed fees had existed when her daughter was a freshman, she is not sure she would have taken the same path.
Fetouh said she worries imposing the new fees would result in a lot of students not pursuing opportunities that could shape and improve their lives going forward. And she wasn’t advocating for no fee.
A modest fee could be absorbed by most, “but what you are proposing here is not modest,” she said.
Ellen Newman said with three daughters at the high school she would theoretically be looking at $5,600 in athletic fees. She also said that like skiing, there are additional costs with track, which all three of her daughters run.
She often has to pay a $20 or $30 entrance fee to be able to watch her daughter’s event and if the kids go to nationals, the parents foot the bill for that as well, which includes flying coaches and athletes to events.
School Committee member Tom Hopcroft said he’d like to get a sense of what the attrition might be if they go with the proposed fee schedule. His concern is they might end up with kids losing out on the experience of playing sports and still not making up the deficit.
He also worried about the lack of a family cap for families that had, for example, three kids playing three sports each.
“How much of this deficit are we making up through fees versus through the cap,” Hopcroft asked.
Superintendent Dr. Frank Hackett agreed that losing student athletes due to the fee increase could be a very real unintended consequence and agreed they could run some different scenarios to get a probable budget impact. Hackett said they also planned to look at how well they’ve collected fees in the past.
The student reps to the School Committee urged them to think carefully about their decisions. While Ingo Lee called sports an important part of student life at the high school, his teen colleague reminded the committee that for many students the arts were their sports and were just as important to them as hockey is to a hockey player.
“It’s just something else to consider,” she said.
School Committee Chair Tim Matthews said they would consider it all and be ready to take a vote during the committee’s last meeting in June, which has yet to be scheduled but will likely be the week of June 22.
Chris Stevens is an award-winning journalist who has spent 25 years chasing, editing and photographing stories on the North Shore. She is the co-founder and managing editor of Gotta Know Medford.
