At the high school I attended, if you steal school property,you get detention. Detention is free. If you steal second base, on the other hand, there’s a fee for that.
Millions of students across the United States are now handed a bill by their public high school if they want to play a school sport. These pay-to-play fees can reach several hundred dollars per child, per sport, per season. Several of Arizona's largest school districts charge students $100 or more to step on a court or a field. All this discourages kids from doing what we want them to do in the first place.
Because students who participate in high school sports get better grades, are more likely to graduate high school and more likely to pursue education after high school. Parents
understand the benefits sports provide. In a recent nationwide survey, 84 percent of parents in the U.S. agreed that participation in sports positively affects students' performance in school.
The federal government recognizes the benefits of increasing youth sports participation, including the Healthy People 2030 initiative, which has set a national goal for getting more kids to play sports. While improvement in participation rates has occurred since 2020, the nation is still far short of the 63 percent participation goal.
Sens. Chris Murphy (CT) and Cory Booker (NJ) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (PA) have raised concerns about private equity's growing role in youth sports, introducing the Let Kids Play Act to address the escalating costs families face. While these lawmakers are working to make participation more accessible and curb the excesses of the youth sports industrial complex, they are overlooking the financial barriers that exist in their own public schools. Pay-to-play fees have quietly commoditized a vital part of public education, making participation increasingly dependent on family income rather than student interest or ability.
Peoria Unified School District just doubled its pay-to-play fee to $200 per sport with a family maximum of $600. This is in a district where more than 8 out of 10 students at Peoria High School are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. If a family misses a payment on Peoria Unified’s sports fee, the school district reserves the right to prevent their child from attending prom. Scottsdale Unified School District charges a $200 sports fee, with no family maximum. Arizona’s public school tax credit can ease this burden, but it is capped at $200 per filer regardless of how many children incur high school sports fees in a family.
The national survey of parents illustrates how much costs impact the likelihood of participation. Across all income levels, 99 percent of parents said they would encourage participation if it was free. But as pay-to-play fees rise, parental support evaporates at all but the highest income levels. For families making less than $75,000 per year, nearly half of parents said they would discourage their children from playing a sport when fees reach $200 or more. Six-figure families, on the other hand, show little drop-off until fees reach $500.
Fees of that size are not theoretical. In Massachusetts, Winchester High School charges $675 to participate in school sports. In Ohio, Reynoldsburg schools charge $500 to participate in high school sports, with no exceptions or reductions for those facing financial hardships. This in a district where two out of three students are considered economically disadvantaged. In Knox County, Tennessee, the school board of the state’s third largest school system allows each high school's individual sports teams to set fees. The results are confusion and consternation as students and their parents confront a menu of prices that includes a $500 fee to play baseball and $1,800 to join the cheerleading squad.
Even under the glow of Friday night lights in Texas, more schools are now charging students a fee before they ever throw a block or make a tackle. Hays High School in Buda, Texas, has a proud tradition of football championships, a 8,600-seat stadium, and a brand new $175 participation fee. "This is not something we wanted to do," said a spokesperson for the district, blaming the fee on insufficient state funding. Nobody wants to price kids out of sports, but from school boards to state houses to Congress, it’s time for elected officials to get their heads in the game and take the price tag off high school sports.
Katie Niven is a Benton Scholar and Division I softball student-athlete at Colgate University.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: High school sports shouldn't come with a price tag | Opinion
