Extra fees mar free education

By Matt McMullan

Published: May 28, 2008

“The General Assembly shall provide for a system of free* public elementary and secondary schools for all children of school age throughout the Commonwealth… .”

So reads the Virginia Constitution.

But we’ve added the asterisk, because in many places public education is not free for all children.

That’s not what the constitution intended.

In Roanoke County, a single mother of three paid nearly $200 for “extras” for her children, from locker space to gym uniforms to science and technology classes.

Now, $200 might not sound like much. But this mom had to take out a loan against her car title to cover the costs. She’s still paying for the loan seven months later.

What happens when school resumes this fall and she faces the same dilemma again?

The Roanoke-area mom’s plight might be extreme, but the requirement that parents pay extra for a “free” education is not unique.

JustChildren, a program of Legal Aid Justice Center, had requested fee lists, school board fee policies and waiver information from 26 of Virginia’s 132 school districts. Almost every district reported charging some kind of fee.

The group produced a report on school fees (http://www.justice4all

.org/news/) and presented its findings to the state Board of Education recently.

Angela Ciolfi, an attorney with the group, said JustChildren was not unsympathetic to schools’ struggle to find sufficient funding.

“In bringing this to your attention, it is not our intent to deprive public schools of much-needed revenue,” she told the board. “We are troubled, however, when we see schools passing on costs to students… .”

Virginia’s Standards of Quality are supposed to establish the minimum level of education for students throughout the state. Then the state is supposed to fully fund that level for all students.

Some school officials have said that extra fees are for extra services, such as materials fees at vocational schools.

And we suppose, under strict interpretation, that a school locker could be an “extra” — a student theoretically could carry all her books and other supplies around with her all day long.

But then there was the school division that charged its middle-schoolers a flat $20 instructional charge per person. No indication there as to which extra services were being paid for, so that a parent could opt out if he chose.

Many school divisions, however, including this one, said they tried to work with parents who could not afford the fees.

The point is: Mandatory fees should not be there in the first place.

If the fees go toward something the child truly needs for his or her education, then those needs should be supplied by the state. If the services are not truly needed, then parents should be able to forgo them — and their costs.

State law may require revision to address this discrepancy. It appears that legislation addressing fees has not been revised since 1980.

Somehow, what was “extra” then seems to have become “mandatory” now.

Virginia must ensure that its laws dovetail with the mandate of its constitution: to provide a free public education for all children.