District Looking at Two Pay-to-Play Options to Save Money

Twinsburg students may have to pay a new fee to play sports or participate in other activities next year.

Superintendent Kathryn Powers said the district could save approximately $1.5 million with pay-to-participate and other cost avoidance options (including changes in busing and contracts which Twinsburg Patch will outline in the next few days).

Powers, along with the administration and school board, put together a for the 2012-13 school year. She emphasized that these are just possibilities at this time and that nothing is concrete.

Assistant Superintendent Mike Lenzo said the district is spending around $588,000 on athletics in a year. A way to help offset those costs is to charge students more to play sports.

One option for pay-to-play could be a flat fee. Lenzo said they could categorize all the sports into tiers, depending on how high the expenses for them are. Each tier would then have a flat fee for all athletes to pay. Lenzo said those factors would be determined by the number of coaches as well as the cost of transportation.

The other option could be a percentage fee.

“If you choose to be in a program, and there is a cost associated with it, you would pay a certain percentage of that,” Lenzo said.

Lenzo used and example, saying if a student wants to participate in a $400 activity, and the fee is 25 percent, the family would be charged $100. The district isn’t sure what percentage it might charge students, they don’t plan on charging a 100 percent fee.

“I don’t think, at this point, we want to go to 100 percent of that cost,” Lenzo said. “That’s not what we’re looking at. But we do want to offset the cost for our extra-curriculars.”

The amount of interest in activities will impact the price as well. If a certain activity doesn’t have many people participating, it could drive the cost up. Gymnastics, for example, has a small squad but many expenses, increasing the cost.

Powers said the district is open to new ideas from the community during the open forum on Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium.