Will pay-to-play be the New Hampshire way?

Before they can take the field or skate out on the rink, many New Hampshire student- athletes and their families are being asked to shell out a fee to help cover the cost of school district sports.

Commonly referred to as pay-to-play, roughly one-third of high schools across the state have implemented some type of fee for students who choose to play sports, especially those with a higher per-player cost, said Patrick Corbin, director of the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association.

According to a survey of 92 NHIAA member schools in the fall of 2008, 32 were charging students to play sports, Corbin said. The sport that students were most frequently charging to play was ice hockey, which is typically the most expensive sport for a school to run. Of the 32 schools using pay-to-play, 20 were charging a fee for ice hockey, Corbin said.

Corbin couldn’t say whether there are more schools implementing pay-to-play, but it’s definitely being discussed more often, especially given tight school budgets.

“As is often the case in Massachusetts, it’s often the more affluent communities that will do it because the parents in the communities are used to paying,” Corbin said.

Such is the case at Souhegan High School in Amherst, where students are charged $100 per sport, with a family cap of $400. Business Administrator Elizabeth Shankel didn’t know for how long the district has been charging, but said the fee was increased this year because of budget issues.

Souhegan also has one of the lowest poverty rates among high schools in the state, with only 4 percent of its students eligible for the federal free or reduced lunch program. In Nashua, where the free or reduced eligibility rate is nearing 40 percent, the idea of looking at a pay-to-play system has been brought up by some members of the Board of Education during discussions about the budget. However, there haven’t been any formal motions or votes to do so.

Last week, Nashua’s hockey community turned out en masse to object to the proposal to cut the high school hockey teams, a move that would save $54,969 a year. There are $4 million in cuts being proposed for next year, and the total cut to athletics would be $118,334 under Superintendent Mark Conrad’s proposal.

In addition to cutting hockey, the proposal would eliminate the high school skiing teams, saving $25,364, and would take $38,000 from an athletic trust fund to offset the cut. Conrad has said he chose hockey and skiing because of their high cost per student and has said he is philosophically opposed to a pay-to-play system.

The school board will begin to deliberate on changes to the budget proposal this week. The next budget meeting is at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Nashua High School North.

Corbin, who was once principal at Nashua North, feared what the effect of pay-to-play would be in a city such as Nashua, where there is such a wide gap between the haves and the have-nots.

“It would have a disastrous impact in Nashua,” Corbin said. “It would only reinforce the non-participation of some of the inner-city kids.”

Like in Nashua, pay-to-play often comes up when school budgets get tight. Last summer in Manchester, school officials debated charging students a fee to play sports, but ultimately decided against it, said school board member Stephen Dolman.

“At one point in time, we looked at dropping some sports or putting in pay-to-play, but we ended up doing neither,” said Dolman, chairman of the board’s Athletic Committee. “We ended up trying to find more revenue elsewhere and making some cuts in transportation.”

Dolman said they also cut ice time for the hockey team to reduce costs. He was opposed to charging for sports or cutting any specific athletic programs. Some sports were eliminated last year, but only because of lack of participation, he said.

The school board in Nashua voted to implement activity fees in 2005 to fill a $200,000 cut to the sports budget. An anonymous donor stepped up and provided the money needed to make up the difference, ensuring that students wouldn’t have to pay.

However, the policy in Nashua still stands to allow the district to charge. It’s up to the school board to decide whether to establish a fee schedule. If that were done for next year, the policy requires students be charged for no more than two sports per year, with a family cap of three sports. The fee would be waived for students eligible for free or reduced lunch.

School officials in Hudson and Merrimack said that while it has been considered in the past, students there aren’t charged to play. Andy Krahling, director of athletics in the Merrimack School District, said he believes it came up about five years ago when the district was facing a budget crunch, but was never implemented.

It’s a trend that has been growing steadily across the country, he said.

“It’s become more common nationally with the budgets becoming the way they are,” he said.

Krahling said he opposes pay-to-play, arguing it goes against the principle of equal public education for all students.

“Pay-to-play kind of negates that,” he said.

Some districts, such as Hanover, have had pay-to-play for decades, Corbin said. Hollis/Brookline High School and ConVal High School in Peterborough are among other schools charging for sports, he said. The amount of fees in New Hampshire high schools are across the board, from $30 to sliding scales that vary depending on the cost of the particular sport, he said.

Corbin said one of the drawbacks of pay-to-play is that it gives some parents the feeling that playing time should be guaranteed for their child. Generally speaking, the fees only help to offset a portion of the cost of sports, Corbin said.

“No one is using this as a mechanism to come close to subsidizing an entire program,” he said.

Michael Brindley can be reached at 594-6426 or mbrindley@nashuatelegraph.com.