Pay to Play, Part 2

For a couple of weeks each summer, Triangle Road in front of Hillsborough Middle School becomes a parking lot for 30 minutes around 9am and again around noon. The reason is the multi-decade-long success of the school district's summer enrichment program.

The self-sustaining initiative consists of two weeks of three-hour-per-day, week-long classes designed and primarily taught by district teachers. Students in 1st through 8th grade and their parents choose a topic of interest for either or both of the two weeks. When my kids took advantage of the program a decade or more ago the price for a class was $105 - or about $7 an hour.

Classes ranged from recreational to academic. I remember my daughter taking scrapbooking and theater while my son did computers and robotics, for example.

The takeaway is that parents knew what they were getting—most sessions included a project or some concrete culmination of the week's work - and were happy to pay for it.

During my second term on the school board around 2010, I began to think of ways to build on the success of Summer Enrichment. It wasn't hard to see how this model could be used to revamp after-school clubs and activities at the 5th-6th and 7th-8th schools in Hillsborough.

Clubs at this level were also recreational, academic, and service-oriented—and don't forget middle school sports. But aside from the sports, clubs—supervised by a contractually appointed teacher advisor—seemed to meet irregularly and had little accountability as to their value. And because parents weren't paying anything, their involvement was limited.

My proposal, which I presented to the newly hired superintendent in 2011, included the following.

• Create three sessions during the school year - Fall, Winter, and Spring Enrichment corresponding with the athletic seasons.
• Allow teachers to design and submit proposals for perhaps ten 90-minute after-school sessions—analogous to the 15-hour Summer Enrichment Program—over a 10-week period.
• Charge parents the same fee as they would pay at Summer Enrichment.
• Have these fees apply to the middle school sports program as well.

As I wrote in a previous column, I believe that parents of 5th through 8th-grade students are already paying for their children's activities, and the school district shouldn't be unfairly competing against these other businesses by offering so many taxpayer-funded pastimes in this age group.

One of the complaints I heard from parents and students - especially middle school students - during my years on the school board was that they were locked out of certain clubs and activities because they were already committed to another. For example - a child couldn't be in the school play because that was a full-year commitment, and he or she played a sport during one of the seasons. In the new three-season enrichment program, students could participate in their sport and be in the school play during a subsequent session. 

The complaint I heard over the years from fellow board members about after-school activities for these younger students was that the board members wanted more activities that were "co-curricular"—in other words, more educational. Teachers would undoubtedly be able to provide this in twice-weekly 45-minute sessions before or after school.

In the end, none of my suggestions caught on.