Student pay-to-play idea may be dead issue

Superintendent: ‘Why do you want to upset the whole community over something that’s never going to go forward?’

By: Dick Brinster
   HIGHTSTOWN — The discussion of school board member Bob Laverty’s idea to require students to pay to play sports and participate in other extracurricular activities might be over before it officially began.
   "I didn’t sense an overwhelming level of support," Mr. Laverty said Tuesday of his attempt at the previous night’s board meeting to learn what he must do to have an apparently unwanted item placed on a future agenda.
   The answer is he needs support from other members of the school board. Without it, Mr. Laverty concedes that the idea of having the cash-strapped East Windsor Regional district make students "pay to play" is dead for now.
   "In reality, if it gets pushed off, we won’t be able to do it until next year," said Mr. Laverty, who announced his plan to ask for discussion on the issue in a recent letter to the editor of the Herald.
   Board President Alice Weisman said this week that she has not polled the board but doubts that there are five votes, the number necessary to adopt a motion. She did not want to say how she would vote, pending discussion by the board.
   "My gut instinct is that the votes are not there, but I can’t tell you one way or another," Ms. Weisman said. "But this is not about votes for Bob. It’s about votes for the concept."
   Board member Bruce Ettman said there really is nothing to consider because nothing has been formally proposed to the members.
   "Nor have we obtained an administrative recommendation as to the viability of the concept," he said. "We don’t vote on letters to the editor."
   Mr. Laverty said from the start that he was seeking to save money after the school budget was defeated last month for the second year in a row.
   "It’s about whether it will work and whether it can help us solve some of our problems," he said. "If it doesn’t, then we have to look for other answers."
   Schools Superintendent Ron Bolandi said he does not believe Mr. Laverty should seek to put the item on the agenda without knowing if he has a chance to attract majority support from the board. Only board member James Hauck has responded to Mr. Laverty’s idea, indicating it’s worth discussing outside funding of extracurriculars.
   Speaking hypothetically at Monday’s board meeting, Mr. Bolandi said to Mr. Laverty, "You bring pay-to-play forward and you’ll have 200 people here who might be angry or might be supportive. But you’ve got five people here who say, ‘There’s no way I’m going to entertain that.’
   "Why do you want to upset the whole community over something that’s never going to go forward? You really need to think seriously about putting things on the agenda that people are against."
   Monday night marked the first public mention of the concept, as the board convened for the first time since the combined councils of East Windsor and Hightstown trimmed $490,250 from the defeated $79.2 million budget.
   Mr. Laverty said Tuesday that he’s not trying to stir up the community.
   "I’d like to know what our options are," he said.
   Mr. Bolandi says he has serious reservations about the impact such a plan could have on students from less-affluent families in the district. He points out that about 1,250 of the district’s 5,000 students take part in the federal program that saves them about $4 a day on lunch.
   "I think pay-to-play will cause problems in the district because we have a high free-and-reduced-lunch population. About 25 percent of the kids are on the program, and they might not be able to afford it (paying for extracurriculars)."
   "We might have to make it (extracurriculars) free for them while the regular kids pay, and that might be a problem for us," he continued. "If we can’t charge them for food, how could we charge them for something else?"
   Hightstown High School Athletic Director Gary Bushelli has expressed similar concern about students having to pay to take part in sports, and coaches having to deal with the ramifications.
   "Problems exist especially for coaches who could be forced to play students because a fee was paid," he said to the Herald. "Does a fee payment guarantee playing time? That is a very negative situation."
   Mr. Hauck says there’s support and opposition to the concept, but he will not discuss anything said in executive session. He has not said he supports the concept but said he believes the schools should not necessarily be responsible for funding extra-curricular activities.
   "Education first, everything else second," he said. "I don’t want it to appear that I’m against extra-curricular activities but it is an embellishment.
   "A lot of people like to be involved in sports programs, and I’m proud of the robotics, the pre-engineering activity where kids build robots. It’s an excellent extracurricular program, but I think it should be in the curriculum."
   Perhaps because Mr. Laverty has not aired his pay-to-play concept in public, there has been little visible public opposition.
   But Diane McCready of Hightstown, whose son played on the high school football team, took exception to the concept in a letter to the editor on May 12.
   "The team themselves, along with their parents have done at least two car washes a year, sold pizza, had numerous fundraisers, where ironically the parents do all the buying, and now we’re being told that we will have to ‘start’ paying for our children to participate in other activities," she wrote. "Was there a time when we haven’t paid?"
   Mr. Bushelli understands the problems of the cost of some sports, noting that ice rental alone for the hockey team came to $5,400 last season and that $13,000 was spent on football equipment. But the bottom line cannot be the only consideration, he insists.
   "All studies show that the more involved a student is, the better his or her performance," he said. "We encourage involvement, and pay-to-play would discourage involvement. What about those who could not afford to pay?"