I see that San Benito High School is trying to figure out how to
collect $100,000 in student fees.
I see that San Benito High School is trying to figure out how to collect $100,000 in student fees.
When I saw the headline, I wasn’t sure what the fees were for. Special classes? Gym uniforms? One hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money; I imagined it must come from some pretty large-ticket items.
But no. These are fees for mundane items like late library books, lost textbooks, and bus transportation fees.
As SBHS Board Trustee Steve DeLay said, “Waiting until a student is a senior is way too long. You can do a lot of things with $100,000 rather than have it written off the books. That’s a teacher and a half.”
Well, I don’t want to rob the high school of needed funding, but I think putting the emphasis on collecting fees is putting it in the wrong place.
How about launching an effort to keep students from losing textbooks and library books in the first place? How about not letting a student ride the bus unless the fee is paid?
I can hear the hand-wringers now: “But they’re just kids. They lose things; it’s inevitable. We have more important things to worry about.”
Or in the case of bus fees, “You can’t jeopardize a kid’s ability to get to school if their family can’t afford the bus fee.”
For families for whom the bus fees are a true hardship, the school could have a need-based process for reducing or waiving the fee. But I bet there are a lot of families who just don’t get around to paying.
And how are the children going to grow up responsible citizens if the parents don’t set an example? I believe if we are firm on small things like returning library books on time, some of the big things will start to get better, too.
Let the family forego one or two fast-food dinners or a couple of new video games to make sure the fee is paid. Let the parents talk about what they are doing and why, so the children are aware that paying their way for ancillary services is one of the ways we keep education free in this country.
And as far as late and lost library and textbooks? How can we instill in kids (and ourselves, maybe) the idea that losing a book or returning it late is a big no-no, like filing your taxes late? We don’t want children to associate books and libraries with fear and dread, of course.
But we do want them to treat books like the precious resources they are.
If somebody loaned a child an iPod, I imagine they would treat it with great care, be grateful for the loan, and do everything in their power to make sure it got back to its owner safe and sound. This is because they recognize the value of the thing, and want to keep the respect and friendship of the person who loaned it to them.
How do we give books the same cachet? After all, school library and textbooks belong not just to one other person, but to all of us, including the student who is using them.
We need to encourage students to treat them with reverence and to be punctual and conscientious about returning them on time and in good shape, even if we need to bribe the two toughest kids in the school to set an example and proudly say, “I gotta go – I need to get this books back to the library.”
If this actually starts to happen, and the school sees its fine revenue dropping as a result, I will be more than happy to organize a bake sale to make up the difference.
Elizabeth Gage writes a weekly column for the Free Lance that runs on Thursdays.
