Jun 26, 2016 3 min read

You’ve probably heard of “pay to play” when it comes to charging students to participate in high school sports, but it could soon be “pay to learn” in Central Greene School District.

The school board last Tuesday retired its $40 pay-to-participate fee for extracurricular activities such as sports and marching band because school officials felt it was unevenly applied to certain students.

But by ending that plan, it might mean all students will have to pay a fee.

Superintendent Brian Uplinger told the Observer-Reporter last week the district is now considering alternative revenue proposals, including a $10 to $15 “technology fee” that would be levied on all 1,788 students from kindergarten to 12th grade. The fee would raise between $17,880 and $26,820, a paltry sum when you consider the district’s total operating budget next school year is expected to be $32.9 million.

Uplinger claimed there was no “rhyme or reason” for how the previous fee was collected. This new proposal makes even less sense.

“Almost every college has some sort of technology fee that they charge all students,” Uplinger said while trying to explain the district’s thought process.

“We’re still toying with what it might be called.”

This isn’t college, where tuition and fees are commonplace. This is for a publicly funded education that all students living in the district are entitled to receive.

It doesn’t matter what it’s called. In essence, it’s a tax on every single student who attends classes at Central Greene.

None of this was discussed publicly at either the budget committee’s meeting last Monday night or the board’s agenda meeting the following evening. It was not known if it will be discussed this Thursday night when the board is expected to meet again to vote on its 2016-17 operating budget, which includes a property tax increase.

If and when it is discussed, there are many questions the public should be asking.

How will the money be collected? Will teachers be forced to stand outside their classroom doors panhandling for change as children stream in to take their seats? And what are the consequences for the children whose parents can’t or won’t pay this fee?

And is it even legal? It goes without saying this measure, if enacted, would immediately be challenged in court. Steve Robinson, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, has never heard of any district in the state implementing such a fee and wondered if it would be permissible.

“I don’t think there’s really a black-and-white answer to whether it’s legal,” Robinson said.

It would be another strange circumstance in a school district that has been beset with controversy over the past year, which began with the secret suspension of the high school principal and continues most recently with a nasty contract dispute with the teachers union.

Even if the district is struggling financially right now, Central Greene School Board should find another way to raise revenue other than taxing its students to learn.