Howard Co. to provide free public education

Schools to eliminate activity fees

Parents had complained of wildly varying charges

Columbia Flyer By Jennifer Broadwater Posted 3/12/09

Howard County school officials have decided to eliminate “activity fees” charged to parents. The fees, used to pay for materials such as craft supplies, calculators, magazine subscriptions and spelling workbooks, previously varied wildly from school to school and had prompted complaints from parents. In addition to eliminating the fees, officials have drawn up school supply “menus” in order to make supply lists at different schools more consistent...

The changes follow a moratorium on activity fees and all other requests to parents for supplies imposed by Superintendent Sydney Cousin last fall.

“We wanted to be sure there was some consistency, and more importantly, we wanted to be sure we weren’t asking for things the school system should be supplying,” Cousin said in October. “Free and public education is what the state says we should be supplying and that’s what we’ll do.”
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How did Howard County Public Schools look at the exact same laws and the exact same letter from the Maryland Attorney General's office and come up with different conclusions from Superintendent Weast?