Minnechaug adds activities fee to balance club budgets

Date: 9/13/2010

Sept. 13, 2010

By Chris Maza

Reminder Assistant Editor

WILBRAHAM -- Parents of high school students will have to dip into their pockets if their children want to be in school organizations this year.

For the first time, Minnechaug Regional High School will be charging a $25 fee to students who participate in student activities. The $25 is a one-time fee, meaning that students can participate in as many clubs and activities as they wish once the fee has been paid. Athletics, however, still have their own user fees associated with them.

"We had added the participation fees for athletics, which is a pretty common practice and when we were looking at the equity of that, we said, 'What about all the kids doing all the clubs in the school?'" Minnechaug principal Stephen Hale said.

Tough economic times and tighter budgets have forced the district to look into cutting programs and Hale said the fees are an attempt to circumvent that.

"It is a challenging budget and we have been looking for ways to raise revenues so we would not have to cut as much," Hale said.

In addition to whatever expenses are accrued while running a club or activity at the school, Minnechaug gives stipends to faculty who act as advisors to those organizations. No school-sponsored organization can run without a faculty advisor to supervise the group's activities.

"We offer somewhere between 35 and 50 club stipends," Hale said. "We were starting to have to take a hard look at whether or not we wanted to cut those. We thought this might be a way we could prevent that from happening."

Students who are interested in participating in a school activity are not immediately required to pay the fee. However, all fees are due by Sept. 24. Cash and checks made payable to the Hampden Wilbraham Regional School District (HWRSD) are accepted. The fee can also be paid online through the UniBank link on the HWRSD Web site, www.hwrsd.org.