This blog post was written by Juliet Perry, a parent in the Kent School District and 2011 Volunteer of the Year for the city of Covington, for our edCored series on education funding. If you want to be notified when new content is published in this month-long series, please subscribe to the LEV Blog’s RSS feed or once-a-day email digest.
What do you call an annual financial hemorrhage? I call it “Back to School.” Those are the days when I am tempted to just drop off a blank checkbook and a signature stamp at my kids’ schools and then have them mailed back to me when they are all done. Fees, tuitions, academic and extracurricular extras; I am more surprised each year how it adds up to, then surpasses, my mortgage payment. I enter this withdrawal program with eyes wide open – I choose to enroll my kids in the extras; to expose them to new activities, expand their horizons and their minds. But I wonder at what point I have stopped paying for the extras and have started filling in the gaps in educational funding. Let’s look at my Back to School ledger:
9th grader:
• $200 school clothes
• $115 graphing calculator
• $100 other school supplies
• $30 ASB fee
• $60 Annual
• $100 Pay to Play fee
• $60 Tennis team uniform
• $185 Tennis gear – racket, bag, court shoes, etc.
• $25 donation to Tennis team fundraiser
• $80 cello rental fee (which means he has one at school and one at home; I don’t even want to go into how much the one at home cost!)
• $42.50/month tuition to Youth Symphony group
• $40 PTSA membership for 3
o Total: $1037.50
My 5th grader is a bargain in comparison:
• $150 school clothes
• $100 school supplies
• $20 supplies donated to the classroom
• $50/month tuition 0-hour drama club
• $64/month piano lessons
• $20 PTA membership for 2
• $50 donation to PTA fundraiser
o Total: $454
Grand total: $1491.50, which gets us through September 30.
For my kids the benefits, of course, vastly outweigh the costs; I will write my checks each year with only a small amount of grumbling. But my children are extremely fortunate to have these options. We enjoy financial stability when many do not. I am a non-employed adult, free to spend countless hours in the car, chauffeuring my children from one activity to the next. Frequently, hours not spent in the car are spent at their schools, volunteering my time and gifting the school district with unpaid labor. But we are an average middle class family. The choices I make on behalf of my children don’t come without a measure of personal sacrifice. We don’t take vacations. We don’t buy new cars. We keep to a budget for food and clothing. Even still, I can scarcely imagine having to choose between drama or music lessons; I can’t even fathom having to choose between pencils or breakfast.
Many of these Back to School expenses would continue to rest on my shoulders if education were fully funded. But it shouldn’t be too much to expect our state and our nation to put the future of our children first.