No argument there.
Extracurricular activities, after all, are not linked to academic programs such as the cocurricular electives of drama, speech, band, newspaper and yearbook.
The main extracurricular activities in secondary schools are sports, which are not tied into the academically required physical-education program. Athletes must pay to play (PTP) in order to reduce public subsidies of an acknowledged educational frill.
But while the PTP requirement does lift some of the financial burden from taxpayers, it does not provide fairness to individual athletes.
PTP almost always requires all athletes to pay the same fees regardless of the actual costs of their chosen sports.
A school's athletic-program budget includes salaries of the athletic director, coaches and officials, insurance, team transportation, uniforms, equipment, facility maintenance, etc.
Under the inequitable PTP system, a tennis player pays the same participation fee as a football player--even though the football program is many times more costly than the tennis program.
Let's say PTP requires athletes to pay 20 per cent of the school's athletic budget. If football's budget is $200,000, its 100 athletes each should pony up $400. If the tennis budget is $10,000, its 20 athletes each should pony up $100.
Rules of economics should apply to school athletics. Let individual sports compete and live or die in the marketplace. (29 AUGUST 1999)
