As we all know, the Newton Public Schools Department has increasingly looked towards the use of fees to help close budget gaps.
Fees aren’t perfect for lots of reasons (including the fact that they’re not tax deductible). But one argument in favor is that seniors, empty nesters and other property owners who don’t have kids in public school (but already pay high property taxes, much of which goes to schools), don’t have to incur added costs to fund school programs they don’t use.
But what about the use of so-called “family caps” on school fees?
For example, the school bus fee this year is $310 per student, with a “family maximum” of $620.
Is it fair that a family with two children who ride the bus pays the same as a family with, say, five or more kids?
If you got six kids all riding school buses you’re either Octomom, or maybe a foster parent…. but the principle we should strive for as a community is that no kid get left out of activities because of inability (of a parent) to pay. So, caps are very important here.
BTW– you left out a scenario in addition to homeowners without kids — those of us that send our kids to private school and would be paying twice. (That is our decision, of course — and we pay the taxes you describe anyway)
Spending $600+ so that my two kids can ride the same bus is, as my six year old says, “Stupid.” $600 for them to go to the same place, at the same time. But we live over a mile away, and there is no way my six year old could walk to school and be there on time and be ready to work. So, should I drive my kids to an already congested area just to “save” $600? I am beginning to think that my pocketbook is losing out, and I should just be a Newton parent that adds to the congestion at drop off! What do you think?
It’s an equity issue. Why do we have to pay for school services — ones that until recently were free? Does the City charge people who call the fire department? Do you get a bill when the City plows your street or fills a pot-hole? If not, then why do parents of kids who use the public schools have to augment a school system that they already support with their tax dollars?
This was a tolerable situation during a budget crisis because parents did not want to see the schools lose services. But if there is a surplus, why would NPS even consider continuing this practice?
@Bill:I understand your point but I was actually asking a different question.
I’m asking: Since we do have a system where we ask school families to pay fees for certain services, is it fair that large families essentially enjoy a volume discount?
Of course, this practice is not limited to Newton school fees. For example, most employer administered health insurance programs give you three enrollment options (a) employee only (b) employee and one dependent and (c) employee and any number of dependents from two to infinity. As a result, if Uncle Henry wanted to buy insurance for Auntie Em, Dorothy Gale and himself, he would have to pay the same health insurance premium as the Little Old Lady who Lives in a Shoe.
As a result, Uncle Henry is essentially subsidizing the Shoe family.
Greg – as the single mom of an only child, this has been a pet peeve of mine especially when it comes to insurance. My employer makes me pay for a family plan (unlike some places where there are also 2-person plans), and I’m paying the same as a family of 10. I wouldn’t mind so much if there were increased costs as the number of kids went up with a cap after 3 or 4, but it’s definitely been a financial hardship having to pay the highest rates for everything.
These bus fees are terrible. They’re…
– non-deductible (vs. property taxes)
– regressive
– arbitrarily assessed based on locations of homes and schools
– inequitable (vs. treatment of other city services) and
– providing economic incentives for increasing automobile traffic.
The only thing worse is the fact that they are waived for kids #3, #4, etc. That waiver is not for reasons of economic hardship (since it’s offered to families of all income levels). It’s there just for political expediency, because a charge of $930 or $1240 would be seen as too much.
Greg: Yes, I did not answer directly, but it feeds into the same narrative: It should not matter whether we are discussing a large of small family. There should not be fees at all.
Whether residents are single, have no children, or have many children, they are expected to fund schools, safety, public works, etc. through the same funding mechanism: Property taxes. In return, we all benefit from an array of common service, which include access to a strong school system. Ergo, “the public school system.”
If the public is unwilling to fund it, then the level of service should be reduced accordingly. Instead, we have created a system where the function of school operations has become dependent upon fees, PTO drives, attempted naming rights, etc. We don’t do this with other city services.
Using your question, maybe we should charge residents for how much they use our streets. Or how many books they take from the library. Or if they call the fire department or have a lot of snow on their street. But that would be ridiculous, as those are public services residents already fund through taxes. So then, why would we accept this fee model for schools?
Seniors didn’t have to pay fees when they had children in school. Taxes took care of it. This deconstruction of service fees is ridiculous. We are a community. We should all pay taxes and that is all inclusive. The way it used to be. The way it should be now.
In addition, we moved into Newton when there were no bus fees (and we had no kids). Now that my kids go to school . . . now we have no free buses, and not one school is in walking distance of my house (Angier, Brown, Newton South). In fact, Brown and Newton South are very far away, and would involve crossing Route 9. So, when my kids are old enough, either I can add to the already congested area (for the price of gas for my Prius) or I can say good bye to $600+.
If I sent my kids to private school, I would expect to pay for lots of things. But this is PUBLIC school. I already supplement classroom supplies (I bring in paper towels, tissues, markers, etc) and this is used by the CLASS and not my child. We don’t ask librarian patrons to bring their own books!
Eight years ago I voted against the creation of a revolving fund for school bus and other school related fees. At the time I predicted we would have the problems we have now, which is an increasing reliance on “nickel and dime” fees that go up and never come back down or go away, and contain inherent unfairness and inequities. A more cynical person might compare it to the parable of the “boiling frog.” I remember getting slapped upside the head by some of my good friends on the school committee at the time. But I was right.
Seniors who no longer have kids in the schools benefited from property tax supported schools when they were parents of school age kids. And if they were never parents or sent their kids to private school, they are still part of a community that supposedly values public education. The fact that our schools are looking to ever increasing activity fees and selling naming rights to support their mission tells me our community is running off the rails when it comes to meeting our obligation to our public schools. I am sick of having to make a Hobson’s Choice every time these measures come up for a vote.
With all due respect to FDK proponents, we should use these “savings” to correct our course and eliminate school realted fees. Then we should bury them and never let them come up again.
I understood this thread to be : IF we have fees, should there be a break for large families?
My view on that is that we ought not assume a large family can’t afford the bus fees. Allow those families for whom tat’s a burden apply for a break, based on economic circumstances. Let’s face it, a family using Newton schools to educate their 5 children is costing the city much more than a family with one or two kids. Certainly a lot more than the extra $900+ to transport 5 kids vs 2.
Families should not have to pay bus fees. It’s necessary to get to the school in order to attend it and it’s a mandatory attendance and a benefit to the community and the country. However, I must say that as a high school student many years ago in Boston, I had to pay to ride the T (then the MTA), although at student rates.
Other fees that benefit only a few and are extra-curricular in nature can be treated differently in difficult financial times. It’s not necessary to supply expensive sports equipment to the handful of students who play on teams. And it’s not necessary to supply expensive equipment for things like culinary arts. If certain students want these things, their parents can come up with some money, or the PTA or some charitable organization can help. They aren’t part of the basic education that the community should provide. Nor of course was it necessary to build a $200 million high school, but that’s water under the bridge.
Ted Hess-Mahan — Is there any way to break the cycle of providing schools with a set portion of our total City budget? Is this something mandated, or can we be flexible in such allocations?
And I forgot to add when my husband was laid off last year, we were allowed to put off the payment of the fee, but not forget the fee. My small salary was supporting the family of four. I was horrified when my husband told me that the fee would NOT be forgiven (we still had an outstanding balance of $300 at the time of the layoff. Newton refused to waive the fee. We just sent in the check last week. We aren’t a large family and nor do we live large, but at the time $300 was alot of money when your household is living off unemployement and an administrative assistants salary.
Let’s be clear: Greg is asking *how* to collect fees in the context of a large budget surplus. That surplus represents *our* money. We should have a say in what is done with that surplus.
Currently, we have a system that is not fully supported through the designated funding system. That is the problem — not how many children a family chooses to have. The opportunity exists for the City to eradicate an insidious funding practice that has supported unsustainable spending levels and undermined the basic compact of a public school system. Eliminating the fee structure eradicates this questionable practice.
If you believe in a public school system and sound budgetary practices, this is an easy one.
Dan Fahey, you are right on the mark. We cannot assume that a family with many children cannot afford the bus fees. Personally, I opted for driving my kid to school every day rather than pay the fee..just easier and cheaper for me…that was my choice. People choose to have a mini-van full of kids…they should pay more than those of us who have 1 or 2!!
I should add to what I wrote above. I was responding to Greg’s question about the capping, not to whether there should be fees at all.
I am in absolute agreement that there should be no bus fees for kids attending Newton Public Schools, especially when kids do not live within walking distance or when there is no safe route to walk, and I am appalled by what Newton Mom writes about the lack of adjustment (not just delay) for families with financial hardship. I would be in favor of keeping bus fees for kids attending private schools (speaking as someone who used that service for 2 years). While I never used the NPS, I’m a firm believer in free public education and that includes having the means to get to school.
@Hoss, that is a question for the Mayor. The NPS budget has more variable costs than some other departments, such as student enrollment, energy costs, changes in state and federal mandates and funding, etc. The amount of available Chapter 70 funding in particular dictates how much we can spend on public education, although Newton is far less reliant on that particular source of funding than other communities. The federal stimulus money we received a couple years ago made more money available for specific initiatives as well. The current mayor has not applied a strict formula to the allocation of funding to the schools that I am aware of. But if someone wants to correct me on that, feel free to enlighten me.
In regards to bus fees – I wholeheartedly agree with Bill Brandel, Bruce Henderson, Kim, Ted Hess-Mahan, Barry Cohen, NewtonMom, and mgwa.
School bus fees undermine the basic concept of public education.
As I noted on another thread, Full Day K could actually be done for no additional cost to the school system. The SPED consultant report released last year identified $10M in potential savings from reforms to our SPED program that would not only save money but also better serve our SPED population. The School Committee should be asking the superintendent to fast track these changes so that all fees can be eliminated, for all the reasons so eloquently stated by previous posters on this thread.
Let me add a 6th reason to the list of why bus fees are terrible:
– Because they are administered haphazardly, the bus fees promote cynicism and resentment among our students…and their parents.
Bus passes are checked very rarely. The kids on the bus know who is freeloading. I think that the bus should be free for all students, but if there’s a fee, then each should pay. If the fees are not administered well, then even just one freeloading kid on a bus increases the cynicism and resentment of all students on that bus.
This is not an argument for stricter enforcement of bus fees. That’s a waste of NPS staff time. It’s an argument for eliminating the bus fees and paying for buses the way we pay for heat in the schools. (I truly apologize if I have unwittingly given NPS the idea of charging students for heat.)
@Bruce I totally agree. My kindy student lost her bus pass in January, and I was told not to worry about it. . . . . because no one checks. The bus driver drives the bus, and the school loads the kids onto the bus. My older one said that the passes were checked one in October; and then one day in December he came home to tell me that they were checked. It makes me feel like a fool that I paid. Either charge and administor it correctly, or don’t do it at all.
I bet we are going to get charged a rug usage fee for stepping on the rug and a playground fee. Those kids whose parents don’t pay a playground fee, will have to stay on the black top and watch the others. And don’t forget the lost and found fee. . . . . and the pencil sharpener fee . . . .
I wonder if the taxpayers of Newton would enjoy getting a fuel charge on top of the real estate tax bill because the fuel for the trash truck, the snow plow and other vehicles are more expensive. What about the fee for the truck to fill the pothole on the street that you travel on. . . . .
Some of my elder neighbors think that because they have already educated their kids, and don’t use the busses or the schools, that this fee is great. However, when I was single and newly married and working hard before I had kids, I was supporting their kids (bus and sports) and they paid no fee. When we try to talk about it they just say that because I am using the system, I should pay a fee. Of course, they sent their kids to school with a backpack, and pencils for their kids. Not needing to supply papertowels and crayons for the classroom.
At the risk of being seen to pile on, I have to agree with Bruce, Bill, Jerry, Kim, Ted, Barry, and the others.
A public education should be publicly funded. Period. This has been a long-time fundamental cornerstone of the role of municipal government. If we value it, we need to fund it. That includes getting the kids to the schools, giving them a quality environment in which to learn, motivated faculty and staff, and appropriate tools to prepare them for their future.
We have done well with funding and maintaining some of these, but not all. I know I too have gone well off topic, but there you are…
It’s been like 30 years since prop 2 1/2 and folks are still asking for a free ride? You need to say OVERRIDE loud and clear or loose your right to shame gov’t for not providing. I’m in….anyone else??
@Hoss – Count me in!
Off topic, but related to school funding: I support a fully funded public education system and appreciate that this is the time in life when the bulk of my taxes goes to services we no longer use. However, I’m also aware that Newton has become increasingly unaffordable for many empty nesters and senior citizens. A lot of my empty nester friends moved from Newton soon after their last child graduated from high school and in each case, a family with school age children bought the home.
How often do you hear people say they moved to Newton “for the schools”? Unfortunately, we’ve gradually changed to a community people move to “for the schools” and often leave when the kids graduate. That’s an extraordinarily expensive model to maintain. When I moved to Newton 30 years ago, it was far more common for residents to remain in Newton after the kids moved on. Needless to say, I love kids and have spent the better part of my days with them, but I do think we need to think about solutions that work for the whole community in order to fully fund the schools.
Hoss-I’m also in. It’s time.
Agreed strongly with Bill, Bruce, Ted, et al., but I must add one point. Bruce wrote:
Not exactly arbitrary. It’s worse than that. Let’s not forget that most of these locations are bused because the city tried to save some $$ a generation ago and closed many elementary and middle schools. In a sense, it’s adding insult to injury to these communities.
To drive the point home, the remaining schools were generally designed to be neighborhood schools and were not designed to handle traffic in excess of 300 trips at drop-off and pick-up. Fee equity, student health, developmental and environmental issues aside, creating financial incentives for parents to drive kids to school in Newton is terrible policy. This negatively impacts safety at the schools and the additional traffic hurts everyone in the city.
Back to Greg’s original question…
I think the answer is:
Definitely NO, if small families do not get a break, but
Definitely YES, if small families do get the same break.
…and I much prefer the latter, for all the reasons discussed.
Can we please hear from some School Committee members on this?
@Bruce, I think I may have scared the SC away from participating on the blogs. 😉
Agreeing with all of those above re: the bus fees. Also, the volume discount doesn’t apply in all cases. A family with a 3 middle school kids, each participating in one club, will pay $60 for each child for the year ($100 if they do a drama production.) A family with a single child who participates in 3 different clubs will pay $60 (or $100.)
For the most part, stronger arguments have been made here about eliminating bus fees completely than about whether we should cap bus fees for larger families. So I’ll join in first on the general concept of fees and then address fee caps.
I’m philosophically opposed to charging fees that are associated with getting students to school and teaching them while they are there. Our job as a community is to educate our children, well illustrated by our city expenditures, nearly 2/3 of which pay for the direct school budget, some benefits, and our school buildings. This is a cross-generational compact – payment is everyone’s responsibility.
Support for this concept is articulated by NPS via our mission statement and strategic plan: A core value of our school system’s strategic plan is to “Educate the whole child by striving for excellence in academic, artistic, physical, interpersonal and vocational pursuits”. And according to the mission statement of Newton Public Schools, we are “to educate, prepare, and inspire all students to achieve their full potential as lifelong learners, thinkers, and productive contributors to our global society.” My take-away: Offerings like instrumental music in elementary school, school newspaper and track in middle school, and debate team, Ligerbots, and soccer in high school are essential components of our student’s education and should be available without fees.
But the fee spigot is open and it is extremely difficult to shut off outright. Our budgets now are built with this money. This year fees represent 1.5% of our direct school budget, or $2.7 million dollars. From a purely practical perspective, I’d like to see our reliance on fees reduced over time and gradually eliminated, rather than see it stopped outright in our next budget cycle. Exception: high school parking fees; see paragraph below.
Bus fees: Bruce and others well articulate many problems associated with bus fees. But fees don’t only raise dollars, they also can influence behavior. For example low high school parking fees may increase the number of student drivers, while high fees may lower this number and/or force more students to park in surrounding neighborhoods. We should consider the behavior we want to support when we set parking fees.
Similarly, I believe that a busing program with no family cap will incline larger families to drive their kids to school, increasing traffic congestion around our schools. I want to reduce traffic congestion, and a family bus fee cap should help achieve this result. We can test this theory, but until we do this I consider this to be the most compelling reason to maintain a cap.
Steve
As a side note, I just went online to pay the damn bus fees – the only credit cards they accept are Mastercard and Discover (I have Amex and Visa). But even worse, the fee for a $610 credit card transaction is $17.50. Really??? Sure, it’s free if you use an “electronic check” but why make it so complicated? This is another big issue with these fees: first, paying them online is inconvenient and/or expensive, and second, there is almost no accountability as to who has paid fees and who hasn’t (other than sports, from what I can tell, where a check has to be handed directly to a coach.) Bus passes are never checked even though the buses – at least at the middle school level – are totally overcrowded. Every year when I write this check I feel like a total idiot, because so many other families just have their kids ride free.
Tricia — With respect to the credit card fee (and not the sucker aspect), that fee is a direct pass-through from the vendor. Use your bank account transfer/electronic transfer. If City Hall absorbed the credit card fee, our transaction would effectively be at a discount.
@Hoss: Certainly there’s a cost involved in mailing, processing, logging, depositing a check at the Ed Center as well. So perhaps, mailing the check nets the School Dept. less than paying by credit card?
Greg — You’re right. The rule-of-thumb is that every manual accounting transaction costs $8. But the kicker is these are standard fees from vendors that handle such transactions. If you want to take the fee away, City Hall would need to insert a manual process of refunding the fees. So in Tricia’s example, now the effective discount is $17.50 (from the bank) + $8.00 (manual process of refunding). Using the bank transfer by inserting a routing and account # is the way to do this.
BTW Greg — I know it’s become fashionable to mock Mayor Cohen, but when the City first installed a web system make payment I sent an email to the Mayor’s office asking why we charge a fee. The base-charge at that time was 50 cents, and there was no way to avoid it. I sent an email to the mayor suggesting that 50 cents a bit insulting considering we are avoiding $8 worth of hassle in the accounting area. Mayor Cohen called me back and explained everything. I found that to be quite flattering that he would call. These days we send a comment or question and maybe, just maybe — three weeks later we might get a response from the Setti Warren’s Assistant Officer.
Discount? For whom? I still pay $620, it just means that Newton would only get $603. So yes, Newton collects less per transaction, but that’s their cost for the use of the bank’s system. Retailers are not allowed to pass these fees on to consumers. Also, fee structures vary among credit card companies and banks – maybe our system isn’t the most cost effective. And a manual process of refunding fees? How so? When someone sends me a credit card payment for an item that costs $100, they are charged $100 on their credit card and $96.50 ends up in my bank account after $3.50 is kept by the vendor in the middle. Look, I paid using the electronic check method, so it doesn’t effect me, but plenty of folks won’t feel comfortable doing that. If we’re going to be charging all these fees, shouldn’t we be encouraging people to actually pay them by making it easier?
Tricia — The real crime is that you’re paying and others are not. This isn’t a for-profit enterprise where the fees simply reduce margin.
Hoss – when I emailed Setti about an urgent problem, I heard back that evening.
Steve notes that “the fee spigot is open and extremely difficult to shut off outright.” If so, then let’s start with just the bus fees, which to me are the most troublesome and ill-considered of existing fees, for reasons 3, 4, 5, and 6 noted above.
In the FY13 budget, the bus fees are $491K, and the student activity fees are $1,350K. Together they are magically close to the $1.7M surplus from last year. Many will note that we should not use a one-time surplus to address an ongoing problem like fees. But using part of this one-year surplus to eliminate bus fees for one year would give us a year to figure out how to continue providing public education (including necessary transportation, heating, and lighting, etc.) on a comprehensive — rather than partially a la carte — basis.
Steve’s argument for keeping a family cap on bus fees is a great argument for eliminating bus fees entirely. I’m glad to hear that he favors reduced (and gradually eliminated) reliance on fees. I would favor a more rapid pace for addressing this — at least for the bus fees.
@Bruce: Isn’t it a little late for to eliminate the bus fees for this school year?
@Greg: If the $1.7M surplus had not been allocated and if the School Committee were meeting soon, it would not be too late, but I suspect those conditions are not met, so maybe it is a little late. I wonder how many bus passes have been sold and how difficult it would be to issue refunds for them. If it’s too late for this year, then I hope this fall we can start working on getting them “stopped outright in our next budget cycle.”
@Bruce: Even if bus fees are the “most troublesome and ill-conceived” of existing fees, should that be the reason to put them on the top of the list for removal? I would set priorities based upon what might cause the greatest detriment to a student’s education.
How many budding jazz saxophonists might be nipped by the imposition of the 4th grade instrumental fee? How many future legislative leaders might not find their voice when dissuaded by the debate team activities fee? How many Dean Kamen wanabees might settle in as competent but uninspired industrial designers because of a user fee for the Ligerbots program?
I am not trying to defend the bus fee, but am entertaining a different basis for ranking fees on the “good-bad” scale.
Steve – all things being equal, I could see your point. However, given what others have said about how all the burden of the bus fees is falling on the families honest enough to pay them, while many kids are riding for free, I’d say the priority should be bus fees in order to have system integrity. Besides the obvious unfairness of a system where cheating is rife, it’s also teaching a terrible lesson to Newton school kids who ride the buses.
Steve, your argument about “how many budding……”, etc., can be used to use our tax money for almost any indulgence. It’s totally irresponsible. How many budding goldsmiths won’t know they would like it, unless we fund classes in gold work, or marble sculpture, or ice-climbing, or deep-sea fishing, or……..
Let’s stick to assuring basic education, and let people find their niches on their own. Most people will, and the few who don’t may end up being stars at something different.
@Barry: I am not a fan of user fees within our school system. But my post was in response to Bruce, who seemed to express that above all else bus fees should be the first to go.
@mgwa: I have been speaking with staff at NPS. I can tell you that they are acutely aware of the problems with bus pass fee collection and monitoring, and are working with focus to address them.
Steve,
As I said at the beginning of this blog, kids have to get to school. Free bus service is the least a city like Newton can do to assure that kids get the basic education they need, and arrive at school on time and in a healthy state, regardless of weather or distance. Teaching specialized skills like saxophone or debating is fine if the budgets allow it. Then an order of priorities needs to be set. Buses come first, in my opinion, in a city like Newton with poor public transportation.
Barry, I understand your point. You and my friend Bruce both consider the bus fee issue to be the number one priority. I am at a different place, and I think it is based upon what I view as the minimum education level we should offer to our students. For example, I don’t consider 4th grade instrumental instruction to be a “specialized skill”, I see it as a core piece of a well rounded education. So too the school newspaper, debate team, science competitions, and even the most common fee target, after-school sports. At present every school activity that takes place after regular school hours has at least a student activities fee and usually an additional fee attached to it. Yet these are not niches – they are mostly valuable mainstream educational and skill building programs and they should be offered without the fees that inaccurately suggest the concept of “frill”.
I repeat that I am not arguing in support of bus fees. I am arguing that they are not the worst of the worst, and if I had to choose I would prioritize feeless public education over feeless bus travel.
In another post, I was fully ready for the override and had some support. Clearly our Mayor’s organization is managing our City the right way. There really aren’t many Cities in MA as well managed (not a high complement given this is MA but it is a compliment). HOWEVER, if our extra contribution to gov’t in the form of taxes is eaten up by specialized, after school extras — that would be upsetting. What I’d like to avoid is more fees applied to home-ownership such as basic trash fees. I’d like vulnerable neighbors (elderly and poor) to enjoy Newton at a high level. Most importantly, I’m also looking to sustain this quality employee base that we have — from the top down. Small raises eaten away by health insurance changes has and will continue to make being a teacher or administrative dept head a really poor career choice. Weighting these goals over rocket club isn’t much of a decision. It’s even less of a decision when we consider that many students work after school with a good work ethic. Give the $$ to the working kid in the form of a better in-school experience.