Kuna Officials May Cut Fees for Charter School Kids to Play Sports: Kuna District Had Been Asking Falcon Ridge Families for Minimum of $300 for Each Sport a Student Plays

By Katy Moeller, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Apr. 26–Chad Bullard, a Kuna father of three boys, expected to pay fees for his kids to play on sports teams in the Kuna School District.

Bullard, whose children attend Kuna’s only charter school, never dreamed extracurricular fees would range from $300 to $1,000 per child per sport or activity.

“I thought they would be minimal,” he said of the fees, which opponents contend are prohibitively high.

A minimum of $300 per student per sport is what the Kuna School District has been asking parents of children at Falcon Ridge Public Charter School to pay.

That may change soon.

The Kuna School Board met with the Falcon Ridge School Board last month to negotiate the extracurricular fees. Their tentative agreement — which needs final approval by the Kuna School Board — would reduce fees and set annual caps.

The proposal would cap annual extracurricular fees for middle school students at $300 and high school students at $400.

“It’s something that we could do. But for some people, it’s still way out of reach,” said Kammy Fisher, a Kuna mother of two.

Falcon Ridge now has 270 students in kindergarten through 8th grade. It opened in fall 2005. The school plans to add 9th and 10th grades next fall.

Falcon Ridge does not have its own sports teams yet, so parents hope their kids can join teams at Kuna’s traditional public schools.

Fisher’s very athletic son would have played a sport every season during 7th and 8th grades. But he was sidelined by the cost. The fees would have run up to $900 if he’d played three sports.

“We chose not to have him play any sports. He was disappointed,” Fisher said.

Kuna School District officials said they must charge extracurricular fees to keep their own budgets balanced.

The district’s fee schedule mirrors what the Nampa School District charges students who attend Liberty and Victory charter schools.

So how were current fees determined?

“We did a cost analysis on our sports to see what it cost to run a sport,” said Ginny Greger, chairwoman of the Kuna School Board. “We took that number and divided by how many kids played in that sport.”

Allison Westfall, a spokeswoman for the Nampa School District, said charter students’ fees reflect coaches’ salaries, field maintenance and insurance.

“That comes out of the funds we receive from the state,” Westfall said.

“If you’re not a student enrolled in our school district, we don’t receive funding.”

Laura Schaul, mother of three and an accountant by trade, argues that the incremental cost of adding a student or two to an existing school team is much less than what the charter kids are now being charged.

Other school districts, including Boise and Meridian, don’t charge extracurricular fees to charter school students who access traditional school teams and other activities.

There are nine charter schools in the two cities.

Eric Exline, spokesman for the Meridian School District, said the district does not and has no plans to charge students at the charter schools fees for participating in sports programs or other activities.

Complaints by Kuna charter school parents about the fees fueled an effort this past legislative session to establish a law that would have capped the extracurricular fees at $150 per child per year.

State Sen. Russell Fulcher, R-Meridian, sponsored the bill.

“We tried to facilitate something (negotiations) for two years — the personalities are just so strong both ways,” Fulcher said. “The legislation was designed to be a compromise position.”

There were two days of heated public testimony on the fees before the Senate Education Committee.

“It was the same two positions, over and over and over again,” Fulcher said.

Charter school parents argue they pay property taxes, a portion of which goes to their local school districts for facility construction costs, but not for maintenance and operations.

The money for that now comes from the state through sales and income taxes.

They say their kids don’t benefit from the facilities they help fund.

Those advocating the fees say it boils down to choice — when parents choose to send their kids to charter schools, they get a different package of benefits.

“Charter schools pay teachers more than public schools,” Greger said.

“They have more flexibility on how they spend their money.”

Fulcher’s bill failed to garner the support it needed to move forward, in part because it’s a local issue, he said.

“There’s only two districts in the entire state where this turned out to be a problem — Kuna and Nampa,” Fulcher said.

Greger said Kuna charter school parents assume that’s because of one person — Jay Hummel, who was assistant superintendent in Nampa before he was named superintendent in Kuna. She denies that.

“We’ve asked Jay to stay out of it. Everyone feels he’s behind this (fees), and he’s not,” Greger said. “This is a board decision.”

Contact reporter Katy Moeller at kmoeller@idahostatesman.com or 377-6413.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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