September is an expensive month for many families, with the beginning of the school year rivaling the holiday season for the amount of money they end up having to shell out.
Along with back-to-school shopping for school supplies, new clothing and shoes, the first few weeks of September also bring schools fees, instrument rentals and other mandatory fees imposed by schools.
Tammy Szilagyi, a mother of three children who attend Dr. Morris Gibson Elementary School, said it adds up quickly in a family with multiple children. Their fees are between $160 to $170 each, and while supplies were included for her younger children, the family still had to purchase an additional $100 worth of school supplies for their son in Grade 6.
“I feel like they’re high because we still pay for field trips and things like that,” said Szilagyi. “It’s a lot, and it adds up.”
While the fees seeming high, she said they are reasonably consistent from year to year, and they are something the family can plan for because they doesn’t tend to fluctuate.
It’s still a hard pill to swallow for some families, she said.
“I guess it’s not something that we worry about too much because you just have to pay, you don’t have a choice,” said Szilagyi. “September’s an expensive month, so to have to pay $550 in school fees like us is honestly going to be a hardship for a lot of people, especially this year.”
Foothills School Division assistant superintendent of corporate services, Drew Chipman, said the division has been conscious of the impact of school fees to families. The division has not increased the basic rates in more than 10 years, with the exception of a technology and bandwidth charge of $15 added four years ago.
“We set the parameters and then the school operates under those,” said Chipman. “For example, some schools charge a fee for supplies and then the parents don’t buy supplies. It does differ.”
The basic fee for FSD children in Grades 1 – 9 is $85. Senior high students pay $90 per year. In addition, schools can add fees for school locks or special programs like art, physical education trips, and other complementary courses that may carry extra fees for materials.
“There’s no set fee across the division because schools have their options to charge those fees,” said Chipman.
He said the state of the economy in the past couple of years has had a significant affect on families being able to pay high fees, and it’s made the school division tread carefully when it comes to school fees.
“We’ve tried to be really respectful in the past about not increasing fees,” said Chipman. “We’ve done what we can to be able to keep those fees at a minimum.”
Michael Kilcommons, Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools associate superintendent of corporate services, said the story has been the same for the separate school division. The division has not increased its fees in a number of years, he said.
“If anything, we would like to be in a position to reduce school fees,” said Kilcommons. “That was part of the NDP mandate a year ago, and then they kind of backtracked when the price of oil went down.”
For CTR Catholic, basic fees are $50 for kindergarten, $55 for Grades 1 to 6, $60 for Grades 7 to 9, and $65 for Grades 10 to 12. The division also employs a family maximum fee of $170.
Some schools choose to apply supplemental fees to their base rates to cover the costs of specific courses, he said.
“Schools can charge additional costs if something is adding up, like if they’re taking a foods class, they can charge for the cost of buying flour and groceries and whatnot,” said Kilcommons. “They don’t, locally.”
The only fees that have increased for CTR Catholic were the transportation fees charged to people living within 2.3 kilometres of their school.
The division doesn’t run it’s own buses, and from time to time Southland Transportation increases its fees to cover fuel and maintenance costs, he said.
Transportation fees for kindergarten students are $100, and all other age groups pay $200 per year.
Other fees covered by parents would be any cost associated with playing on school sports teams for jersey deposits and travel or tournament costs, he said. Music parents also usually pay for program requirements like instrument rental, and travel to festivals or camps, he said.
“There are kind of user fees that are there,” said Kilcommons. “In Okotoks we charge very few of them, and they’re not course-related.”
