Will pay-to-play ruin school sports?

This year Carroll County, Md., became the first school system near Baltimore to implement sports fees. In Strongsville, Ohio, students will have to pony up $120 per sport – with a cap of $240 for a multisport athlete. At Overlook Middle School near Worcester, Mass., soccer now costs $342 and field hockey $389.

Meanwhile, some schools that already charged fees are upping the ante this year. In Minnesota, five high schools in the Anoka-Hennepin area raised fees by $80 per sport, bringing the charge for football to $290 and basketball to $332.

"My sense is that participation fees are increasing throughout the country," says John Gillis, assistant director of the NFHS, who began following the issue when it surfaced some 10 years ago.

According to Gillis, there are more than just economic reasons to explain the rise of pay-to-pay programs. He points to cultural changes that have taken place over the past 20 to 30 years, in which the local high school and its sports team are no longer the focus of small communities, as they once were.

As a result, athletic programs receive a smaller portion of school budgets than they once did – now about 2 to 3 percent. At the same time, they are becoming more expensive to run than ever before.

Also, Gillis says, with more activities available to the public, fewer fans are going to sporting events at the local high school. That has cut income from ticket sales.

Under the gun, athletic directors have had to resort to creative methods to find funds. One answer: pay-to-play.

I can understand the controversy," NFHS's Gillis says. "Here you have a public school that the parents are paying taxes to support. Why should the parents have to pay extra for something that should be included with the school?"

In most instances, schools justify participation fees as necessary for survival.

Connecticut is typical of a state in which participations fees are becoming more common. With the economy in recession, the state has cut funding for schools. At the same time, the legislature has passed laws to increase standardized testing and to boost resources for special education – two expensive undertakings. Add it all up, and something has to give.

Often the local board of education will tell a school there is not enough money to fund a particular sports program. The school is then left with a choice: Cut the sport or look for other sources of money.

"We're against the concept of pay-for-play. We think the problems far outweigh the benefits," says Ed Goldstone, principal of Amity Regional High School in Connecticut. "We are an affluent district, but that does not mean that every family is affluent. If you have a sport like cross-country, where there are 40 kids participating and [even if] only five of them are affected, well, that's inexcusable."

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