Activity Fees

There is not a better example of a special interest group taking advantage of the rest of society as those parents who support 100% publicly financed schools. I realize that not all parents fall into this category, and I also realize that some childless people support publicly financed schools. But in general, it is parents that are stealing half of our local tax dollars to provide public schools for their children that most of us receive very little direct benefit from.

Ironically, most of these same parents who want no expense spared on public schools would crap bricks the size of the Epcot Center if private schools were subsidized with vouchers. After all, private schools provide the exact same positive externalities to society that publicly financed schools do. I would rather have parents pay for their children's education themselves without any public assistance, but you gotta love the hypocrisy of these private school bashing parents.

I am amazed that some parents who get tens of thousands of dollars in education services for free have the balls to complain about $5 to $50 worth of “activity fees” (fees for workbooks, craft supplies, etc.). Today, Explore Howard reports that public schools in HoCo are no longer allowed to charge activity fees:

“We wanted to be sure there was some consistency, and more importantly, we wanted to be sure we weren’t asking for things the school system should be supplying,” Cousin said in October. “Free and public education is what the state says we should be supplying and that’s what we’ll do.”

I have no problem with schools wanting to be consistent in how these fees are charged, but to eliminate them all together makes no sense.

I am curious to see what sort of unintended consequences fall out of this new policy. We may now have teachers having to pay for some of this crap out of their own pockets, or some activities may be cut all together. How absurd.