Speaking
of Sports 

by
Lance J. Lilla

 
Pay to Play - Making the school money, but costing the 'Cats

December 26, 2010

Over the last few years the “pay-to-play” fee for Novi athletes has gone through a lot of change. For a long time the Novi Community School District didn’t have a fee for students to play most sports through the high school.

This all changed a few years ago. The last two years, the school system had a “pay-to-play” fee of $150 per sport with a maximum cap amount of $300 per person.  There was also a maximum amount that could be paid per family, which helped save the parents money if they had more than one student athlete.

This year it didn’t appear that the school cared about saving the parents any money. The price to play was raised to $350 for the entire year.

After much controversy and complaining from parents in the community, the price to play was again changed, this time to $175 per sport, instead of $350 for the year. If the student played two or more sports the fee would still be $350 though.

As a result, it seems that participation in sports significantly dropped. In fact, Varsity Football participation dropped nearly 50 percent. Other sports were impacted as well.

This all means that after the long debate over the “pay-to-play” fee, which was under consideration of being completely abolished or just brought back down to the previous year's price, it was still increased and it seems some student athletes simply gave up.

Final score: Novi Schools, 1. Parents in the community, 0.

(c) 2010 Novi Information Network
www.novi.org

This column is shared by Alex Prasad, Lance J. Lilla and Bernie Fratto on alternating weeks.