Jun 22, 2016 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – Central Greene students may be looking at a $10 to $15 fee to go to school next year.

During its Tuesday meeting, the school board retired the pay-to-participate fee, which charged students $40 to participate in extracurricular activities like sports and band. But there were discussions to enact a fee that would cover every student in the district.

“The plan is to look at another policy that could incorporate the entire district,” Superintendent Brian Uplinger said Wednesday. “In the old policy, it was athletics and activities, including band and football from seventh grade and forward. If we were to incorporate every student, the fee would be significantly lower.”

The board does plan to restructure the participation fee, but has not yet decided whether it will be a technology fee or a service fee, Uplinger said. He did not know how the fee would be collected.

“Almost every college has some sort of technology fee that they charge all students,” he said. “We’re still toying with what it might be called.”

The participation fee was $40 per student, with reductions if the student received a free or reduced lunch. There also was a cap on it so a family with multiple children would not pay more than $100.

If the board switched to a fee every student paid, it would only cost between $10 and $15, bringing in between $17,800 and $26,800 per year.

Steve Robinson, a spokesman for Pennsylvania School Boards Association, said he has not heard of a district implementing a technology for every student.

“I don’t think there’s really a black-and-white answer to whether it’s legal,” he said. “It’s going to depend on what a fee like that is being used for. It would need to be talked through with a local solicitor.”

District solicitor Kirk King could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Uplinger said the board wanted to retire the old pay-to-participate policy because there were districtwide “issues” with it.

“Chorus students were not charged but band students were,” he said. “There’s no rhyme or reason for why it was like that and it didn’t make much sense.”

Uplinger, who was not at the district when the participation fee policy was created, said there has always been some confusion as to how the fee was collected and where the money went.

The board wants to have a new policy in place by the start of the 2016-17 school year, Uplinger said, but if they don’t, students won’t have to pay for an extracurricular activity because the policy was retired.

“The board could collect that money retroactively, depending on how they would like the policy written,” he said.