D203 Board looks at class fee structure
By Hank Beckman For The Sun March 5, 2013 12:26PM
Updated: April 7, 2013 6:26AM
Naperville School District 203 may increase some high school course fees for next school year, but only slightly, while most fees will probably stay the same.
The proposed new fees announced at a Board of Education workshop meeting Monday show increases for both high schools to be mainly centered around new materials and in the cost of textbooks and materials already assigned.
“We’re trying to be very mindful of family finances,” Bob Ross, assistant superintendent for Secondary Education, said. “We have some fee increases, some decreases and the elimination of some.”
Of the 149 courses at Naperville North that include fees, 27 of them would see some sort of change. Naperville Central’s 145 fee-charging courses would see changes in 23 classes.
Many of the increases can be chalked up to inflation, district officials said, such as the fees for Latin I and Latin II at both schools going from $23.80 to $30.
Others classes need an increase to cover the price of materials, such as jewelry making and woodworking classes at Naperville Central.
Some of the proposed fees are new, as in the case of several English honors classes. Honors English classes would begin charging $15 for fiction and nonfiction materials in four different classes at both schools. But Social Studies classes at both schools would eliminate the requirement for subscriptions to Time and Newsweek magazines, leaving those classes without any fees next school year.
One difference between the two schools is the fee charged for Honors Journalism. While the Honors English II class at Naperville Central requires only a $21 subscription to the Naperville Central Times student newspaper, the same class at Naperville North charges $45. But Ross explained that Naperville North also had the advantage of a relationship with Naperville’s community TV station.
“That’s not the case at Central,” he said.
Ross indicated that some discussion had already taken place to bring the NCTV-17 experience to students at Naperville Central.
“We have to have some more conversations,” he said.
The new fees are scheduled to be voted on by the board March 18.
