Marblehead Public Schools Athletic user-fee rates could be changing drastically ahead of the 2024-2025 school year.
At its most recent meeting last Thursday, the School Committee sat through a presentation given by Athletic Director Greg Ceglarski and Assistant Business Manager Emma Puglisi, focusing on three different user-fee options to fund athletics at the middle and high school levels if a level services budget cannot be attained for FY25.
Ceglarski explained that at a level services budget, user fees make up 50% of coaching stipends but at a reduced services budget user fees will make up 100% of those stipends. Therefore, an increase in fees would be required to pay out stipends to coaches.
Option 1 involves an increase in annual fees to an approximate amount of $1,340 per student for unlimited sports at the high school, and $590 per middle school student. The ‘Family Cap’, which is based on two students at the high school that participate in all three seasons, would be $2,680.
“That methodology was followed through in the establishing of the family cap up under each. In reviewing our comparable districts, that is around where other district’s fees tend to be set,” Puglisi said. “This then gave us sort of an even playing field.”
Option two, which is recommended by Interim Superintendent Theresa McGuinness, would be to assess a per-season fee, where fees are highest for the first sport, before decreasing for the second and third seasons.
For the high school, the fee would start at $575 for the first season, then dropping to $495 for the second, and $420 for the third. Puglisi explained that this option is recommended because it would bring “hopefully the smallest impact on the majority of student athletes and their families.”
“More than half of our student athletes are one-season athletes. This model brings us closest in line with what our current families are paying. Currently, families are paying $495 for unlimited athletics, so if you participate in one season of sport, you’re paying $495 already. This fee structure brings you closest to that.”
Opton three is a tiered-fee system, in which higher fees are assessed to more expensive sports. Those sports typically include teams with more coaches, higher coaching stipends, higher equipment costs, or facility rental charges and transportation fees.
The presentation noted that the fees would range from $550 to $950 at the high school level.
“Hockey and football have significantly higher fees and then sports like tennis or cross country have much lower fees,” Puglisi explained.
Committee Chair Sarah Fox expressed her concern over “astronomical” hikes in user fees, specifically in relation to the family cap.
“When I look at the family cap, the first option is 43% above the highest in the entire area, it’s a 235% increase from what parents are paying now,” Fox said. “The second option is 59% higher than Swampscott, a 273% increase of what we’re getting now. And this third option, is 101% higher than Swampscott and 371% increase for families.”
The Committee did not vote on a user fee option at the meeting, and the fee options will be discussed again at the committee’s next meeting, scheduled for March 21.
Fox stressed the importance of taking the burden of funding schools off families paying fees for their children to have access to education and extracurriculars.
“It really just hammers home, we have to fund our schools. We are running a public education facility,” Fox said. “The pay to learn, the pay to play, the pay to have access to things in a public setting, needs to end. We need to pay, as a town, to fund this stuff.”