Pay to play a shutout we can’t afford
I played high school softball. Perhaps “played” is overstating the matter. I wore a uniform, worked hard at practices and watched games from the comfort of the dugout. I was a decent enough player, but most games I left more cleat marks in the parking lot than I did on the field.
Still, I loved being part of the team. I sometimes think everything I know about confidence and perseverance I learned on a softball field. Yet if a fee had been required for me to join the team, I would not have played. My parents had six children. They couldn’t have afforded to pay for each of us to play on our school teams, or play flute in the marching band (as my sister did).
Now schools across the country are increasingly installing such a “pay for play” system. Only those students who can pay the $3,000 for mandatory cheerleading camp and uniforms can be cheerleaders. Only those who can pay $100 for transportation can play on the football team. The idea is not new. Paying for school activities has been common practice in Minnesota, for example, for 30 years.
In California, districts have been doing it for years, too. But now, as they face crushing budget deficits, more schools than ever are finding “pay for play” particularly tempting. There is one fundamental problem with the practice, at least in California.
It is illegal.
A 1984 state Supreme Court ruling, Hartzell vs. Connell, made clear that the state’s guarantee of a free education meant just that. Free. Financial hardship was no defense for violating that guarantee.
In the last two years, six California school districts have been sued for requiring kids to pay for extracurricular activities. The courts have ruled against the schools in each instance, yet the practice continues to spread.
“We say, ‘You guys know you can’t do this. Why are you doing it?'” explained Gary Kreep, executive director of the Escondido-based U.S. Justice Foundation, which filed all six class-action suits, with more on the way. “They say, ‘We want the money.'”
Sports and extracurricular activities are obvious areas to cut because, the argument goes, they do not technically count as part of a child’s free “education.” But the state Supreme Court said they do count as education, and I couldn’t agree more.
Colleges recognize, if high schools don’t, that growing into a well-rounded adult requires more than courses on Shakespeare and American history. That’s why they consider extracurricular activities when deciding whom to accept.
The court also recognized that education is intended, in part, to break down social and economic barriers among students. This is an ideal, I know. The rich will always have privileges the poor will not — SAT prep classes, valuable connections. But schools deepen that chasm by making sports and other extracurricular activities available only to those able to pay.
Indeed, poorer kids need the activities most. The incidence of childhood obesity is highest in minority and low-income populations. And many low-income kids have only one parent at home, or both parents work long hours.
For me, sports provided an education I didn’t get in any classroom. I learned how to talk myself into believing — if only for a few minutes at the plate — that I was the best player on the field.
Money is tight. Teachers are being laid off. But schools can’t resort to offering the enriching experience of sports to only those who can pay. That goes against the ideals of a public education.
And, as we seem to keep forgetting here in California, it is against the law.
(Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Send comments to her in care of this newspaper or send her e-mail at [email protected].)