Is public education free?

We always hear that in the United States children are entitled to a free public education. In this day and age, however, that "free" education often includes fees for all kinds of activities and supplies. Read more in this article from the Chicago Daily Herald:

Line between fees and tuition ‘as clear as mud’

By Emily Krone
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Monday, August 22, 2005

“The state shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. Education in public schools through the secondary level shall be free.”

— Illinois Constitution, Article X, Section I

Illinois public schools are “free” in the same way that all men are created “equal.”

That is, they’re not.

In school districts across the state, parents pay band fees, book fees, lab fees, tech fees, supply fees, athletic fees and — just for showing up — registration fees.

“It’s not really as free and appropriate education as we’re supposed to provide,” acknowledged Ron Kazmar of Students First Illinois, an advocacy group for increased state funding of public schools.

Illinois courts have ruled school fees do not violate the free schools provision of the 1970 state constitution.

Courts have held that schools may charge participation fees so long as they do not charge “tuition.”

But school boards have found the line between fees and tuition is murky — and often arbitrary.

Registration fees, for example, do not equal tuition in Illinois. Neither do fees for such mandatory materials as textbooks and science labs. Nor do fees for extracurricular activities — even those that bear a striking resemblance to curricular activities.

Elusive definitions

The confusion over band fees in Cary Elementary District 26 illustrates just how murky the distinction between fees and tuition can be.

A lawyer from the state board of education advised District 26 that its band fees amounted to tuition because they covered the salary and benefits of the band teachers — prohibited under Illinois school code.

A lawyer for the district, however, told the board the fees were legal if band was an extracurricular activity.

The board, then, scrambled to determine — a month after the school year ended —whether band was or was not part of the previous year’s curriculum.

Ultimately it labeled band extracurricular because it met mostly before school and did not count toward a student’s grade point average.

Thus, District 26 charged parents for a school-sponsored activity taught by district employees hired exclusively to teach band. But according to Illinois School Code, the district did not charge tuition.

“It’s about as clear as mud,” Andrea Gorla, the district’s chief financial officer, said at the time.

Other school districts are walking the same fine line. In Fox River Grove District 3, band is considered curricular and is free, but jazz band, which meets after school, costs $50.

Gorla said she has fielded calls from several administrators in other districts concerned their fees might violate the free schools provision.

In the minority

The fee structure of Fox Valley districts would violate school code in most states.

Illinois is one of only nine states without a free textbooks provision. Forty-one states and Washington, D.C., prohibit districts from charging fees for the use of textbooks.

The Idaho Supreme Court, for example, reasoned textbook fees violate the free school provision of the Idaho Constitution because “textbooks are necessary elements of any school’s activity.”

The same could be argued of extracurricular activities such as student council or math club.

Indeed, California courts have ruled the imposition of fees for educational activities, be they curricular or extracurricular, violates the constitutional free school guarantee.

The Illinois Directors of Student Activities, composed of administrators and activity directors from across the state, lists as its “guiding principle” that extracurricular activities should be considered “integral to education” rather than “peripheral to a school’s main mission.”

Fees undermine that philosophy, said Scott Smith, assistant professor for sports management at Central Michigan University, who has studied the effects of pay-to-play on high school athletics.

He said high school athletics should be considered “co-curricular” rather than “extracurricular” because they instill values and skills as important as those taught in the classroom.

“Now that we’re at the point where parents are paying, more and more high school sports may get to look more like … Little League and community teams. If we go that way, does it make sense to even keep them school-sponsored? This could be the beginning of looking at high school athletics a different way,” Smith said.

Fees over taxes

The Cary-Grove High School newsletter lists its registration fee as “the cost of doing business.”

Most parents seem inclined to agree.

Fee hikes caused barely a ripple in St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, spokesman Tom Hernandez said.

Parents in Plainfield Consolidated School District 202 “understood it was necessary” for the district to raise taxes, said Ron Kazmar of Students First, who also sits on the District 202 school board.

And residents in Fox River Grove District 3 indicated at public meetings before the 2004 tax referendum they would rather make all extracurricular activities self-funded in exchange for a more modest increase in property taxes.

The public preference for fees over taxes may have been reinforced by the April publication of a Daily Herald series on tax-rate increases, which showed they were neither simple nor cheap.

The series showed how 25 suburban school districts collected $204 million more over the past five years than most voters were told they would have to pay.

The difficulty of the tax-increase process, and the need for more money, has pushed nearly every Illinois district to charge for textbooks, despite a state statute that allows residents to override a school board and vote to provide free textbooks to students.

“Even though I am offended by the textbook fees, I am unlikely to start a petition drive,” said Doug Jaffray, a parent in DuPage County’s Indian Prairie School District 204. “I’m sure that the school board is counting on me to do nothing.””