District to charge $75 ‘pay to play’ fee

Published 10:52 am Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE VALLEY – This fall, athletes, as well as band and choir students at Mount Si High School, will have to pay a fee of $75 to participate in sports or music.

The new policy was unanimously approved at the July 11 Snoqualmie Valley School District Board of Directors meeting.

Athletic director and assistant principal Greg Hart wrote the policy and said the fees were inevitable given the rising costs of transportation and stipends for coaches and instructors – the two main reasons for the fee.

“This is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. We’re the last holdout to go to participation fees,” said Hart, who noted most high schools in the area have been charging such a fee for some time. “We’ve gone as long as we could to try to avoid that.”

Multisport athletes will pay a maximum of $150 per year and families with more than one student will pay a maximum of $225 per year. Music students will pay a one-time fee of $75 for the whole year. All of the money will be pooled into one fund for extracurricular activities.

Students who qualify for free lunch will have the fee waived. Those who qualify for reduced lunch will pay 50 percent of the fee or $37.50. Students with other financial hardships can appeal to the athletic director for special consideration. Those wishing to make an appeal can pick up an application in the Mount Si High School counseling center.

No student will be excluded from participating based on an inability to pay the participation fee.

“If a kid is considering not playing because of finances, that’s not OK for us,” Hart said. “We want to do it so everyone can play and make it confidential so it’s not a public thing at all.”

School board president Rick Krona feared the music students may be paying too much considering there are more of them and they use less transportation that sports teams do during the year.

“My concern is that we’re charging the music students for the football uniforms,” he said.

The fee will be revisited this fall to evaluate any necessary changes.

* See the Snoqualmie Valley Record next week for an in-depth look at how the pay-to-play fee will be used.

Staff writer Melissa Kruse can be reached at (425) 888-2311 or by e-mail at melissa.kruse@valleyrecord.com.