20% Drop Sports after 50% Fee Increase

What happened after the MCPS Board of Education unanimously approved Board member Patricia O'Neill's resolution in 2007 to increase the Extracurricular Activity Fee from $20 to $30?

On Thursday, September 24, 2009 The Washington Post ran a story with an upbeat title: More Than Ever, Students Are Playing High School Sports. The article began:

Reporting on its data from the 2008-09 school year, the National Federation of State High School Associations says participation in high school sports, among boys and girls, increased to a new high -- the 20th consecutive year that number has risen. The federation lauded it as high school sports' ability to thrive in spite of the nation's struggling economy.

But tucked in this sports article was a devastating statistic for Montgomery County Public Schools, showing the opposite is happening here.

According to a source at Montgomery County public schools, however, sports participation in Montgomery dropped in 2008-09, down nearly 20 percent from 2007-08... Furthermore, the source said the number of students who received a waiver of the county's $30 athletic participation fee tripled from the previous year.

(According to the MCPS website there is no "waiver" of the $30 activity fee as the article suggests. Rather, if a family makes under $35,000 the fee is reduced to $15.)

How did 20% of our students drop out of sports activities without a peep from the Board of Education or from Superintendent Weast?

What happened? We know what happened. On February 13, 2007, Board of Education member Patricia O'Neill made a motion to raise the MCPS Extracurricular Activity Fee from $20 to $30 to fund JV Lacrosse, a sport that was a favorite of her children.

The resolution, shown below, passed without discussion at the same meeting where it was introduced. There was no opportunity for public notification, discussion or comment. There was also no evaluation of what a 50% increase in the Extracurricular Activity Fee would mean to student participation in after school activities. MCPS requires that this fee be paid by students who participate in any after school activities.

The MCPS Board of Education, in an apparent oblivious haze, assumed that all MCPS families would continue to pay the activity fee no matter what the cost. That didn't happen.

• The first year (2007-08) of the new fee showed an immediate drop in student activity participation. The $405,000 revenue increase the Board had planned for was off by $159,000. Thousands of students dropped after school activities the first year of the fee increase.
  

• By the second year (2008-09) of the fee increase 20% of the students dropped out of after school activities, according to the Washington Post article. That could mean a staggering 8,000 to 9,000* Montgomery County children no longer participate in after school programs at MCPS middle and high schools.

• We are now in year three (2009-10) of this fee increase. How many MCPS students will be participating in after school activities this year?
  

UPDATE: NBCSports.com's Bob Cook reports on Montgomery County Public Schools drop in student after school sports participation in his story Will pay-to-play in school sports keep kids on the sidelines?

ECA

*Update 10/14/09: Detailed data on after-school sports participation and ECA fee reduction requests has been requested from MCPS.  We will update as soon as we receive that information.