Earlier this year, the Utah Legislature approved a $2 billion budget for public schools for the 2003-04 fiscal year. That's billion, with a B.
Contrast that to the $2.9 million Utah school districts spent in total last year on fee waivers for extracurricular activities ranging from drill teams to debate. It pales by comparison.
Yet some Utah legislators, spurred by Gov. Mike Leavitt's Employers Education Coalition, are considering limiting fee waivers strictly to academic classes. The Legislature needs to think long and hard before going down this road because the unintentional consequences could be considerable.
If extracurricular activities are conducted outside normal school hours and there are no fee waivers, the number of students able to participate in activities will, unquestionably, be reduced. Here's why: If a student wants to participate in extracurricular activities and his parents can't afford the fees, he or she will have to work after school to earn money. The problem is, the team practices after school. That student can't be in two places at one time.
The value of extracurricular activities far transcends the costs, which aren't great when examined in proper context. Students who want to play sports or perform on the drill team have to keep their grades up. Some students would flounder academically without this motivation.
In fact, a recent University of Colorado study of nearly 22,000 Colorado high school students found that those who participate in some form of interscholastic activity have "significantly higher" grade-point averages than their peers who do not. In one of the state's largest school districts, non-participants earned an average 2.444 grade-point average (on a 4.0 scale) while students involved in activities had an overall GPA of 3.093.
Another study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that students who are not engaged in extracurricular activities are more prone to risky behavior such as dropping out of school, experimenting with sex, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, and engaging in criminal activity.
These are just two studies that attest to the value of these activities.
If anything, schools need to find a way to engage more students in activities that teach them how to work as a team, and that teach them citizenship and the value of hard work. Those sound very much like the kinds of attributes employers seek in prospective employees.
We're not saying this issue shouldn't be studied. But if legislators and coalition members insist upon applying a business model to public education funding, they would do well to consider the vast benefits of these activities — documented in a wealth of education research — versus their relatively small cost. School districts aren't going to balance their books by eliminating fee waivers. They're only going to discourage students who have immense talent and little means to participate fully in activities that develop those attributes.