Parents, you should be seeing your fees online as of today. In the name of transparency, this post is intended to break down each individual charge in more detail than what you can see on the website. I'll go through each one and explain exactly what the money is used for, and why it is set to the amount that it is.
Mandated Fees
1. Bus Fee- $50
This is a school-wide fee that applies to every sport. It covers the transportation costs to take us to each race. The school sets the amount. They based it off of previous, as well as projected costs. From what I understand, the school is already in the hole a bit with busses and they may be using a portion of this to pay it up.
2. District Participation Fee- $35
This is a mandated fee set by the District. We have had trouble getting clarity of what exactly this goes towards, but it also applies to every sport.
3. Drug Test Fee- $5
Hopefully Self-Explanatory. Also District mandated.
4. Operation Fee- $60
This is another mandated fee from the school. From what I understand, it is new to this year, and the intent is to use it for equipment such as team tents, canopies, necessary gear, etc. My hope is that this means we can get things like racing spikes and running watches.
Extracurricular Fees
5. Competition Fee- $100
This is used to pay the registration fees of all our races. In the past, region races such as Pre-Region, JV Region, and the Region Championships all charged little to nothing, as it was covered by the region. This is not the case this year, as the only race the region is covering is the region championship. The cost of all the others now falls to each team within Region 5. We set it at $100 based on what it has cost in previous seasons, as well as factoring in the additional cost with that change. Each individual meet costs us anywhere from $150-250 dollars in registration fees.
6. Uniform Fee- $50
The school introduced a fee structure that pools funds for uniforms between sports, but we opted out to keep the costs lower and exclusive to us. This money was and will be used for new uniforms. This fee may not appear every year, as uniforms are returned at the end of the season, and then handed out again.
7. Program Fee- $50
The idea with this one is to use the money for anything related to team building. Things such as team breakfasts, dinners, events, training camps, bringing chocolate milk/gatorade to practice, bringing snacks to races, senior gifts, etc. Any surplus can then go towards providing gear such as shoes and stopwatches to those who don't have access.
Hopefully this provides some clarity and explanation. As you can see, nearly half of the total fees are mandated and out of our control. I'm proud to say that we are still one of the cheapest sports that you can do.
