To the Editor:
As former long-serving members of the Princeton Public Schools (PPS) Board of Education, we want to offer our perspective on the Board’s recent policy adoption on July 21 regarding student activity fees of $100 per middle school student and $150 per high school student. The payment of one fee will allow a student to participate in as many activities as they wish during the 2026-27 school year. The activity fee was adopted as the PPS Board of Education looks to develop new revenue streams while also examines cost-saving measures to protect vital programs and maintain high-quality teaching.
We are also community members, taxpayers, and former and current PPS parents who recognize how important extracurriculars such as athletics, the arts, and other clubs are to PPS students. We agree with one administrator who often said that students went to school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., but loved school from 3 to 8 p.m. During COVID, many families cited how essential extracurriculars were to students’ mental and physical health and implored that the Board of Education reinstate them as quickly as possible.
The implementation of an activity fee is a change to long-standing practice in Princeton, but deemed by the superintendent and the Board of Education to be necessary at this time since the Princeton Public Schools’ budget is being stretched further each year. Rising costs in transportation and healthcare, along with other cost drivers, are responsible for significant budget increases. We know firsthand how difficult it has been in recent years for the Board of Education to balance the budget without cutting staff or programs that directly impact students. In fact, activity fees have been discussed as a potential necessity for years, well before Dr. LaSusa’s arrival in 2025. And Princeton isn’t alone. Robbinsville, for example, recently ended some athletic programs to help close its budget gap.
We support an activity fee in order to preserve access to these essential extracurricular activities for all students. We trust that PPS will implement and communicate a process that ensures no student declines participation in extracurricular activities due to the financial burden imposed by the new activity fee. We expect that the Board of Education, superintendent, principals, counselors, teachers, coaches, and club leaders will clearly and repeatedly inform families that the activity fee will be waived for families receiving free and reduced-price lunch as well as for any family for whom the new fee presents a financial burden. Further, we hope that PPS administrators will present registration data to the Board to examine whether the activity fee has become a barrier to student participation in extracurricular activities, and modify this new practice if it has.
Asking PPS parents to pay an activity fee only while their children are in middle and high school will ensure that other taxpayers don’t bear this specific financial burden year after year, since the activity fees end upon graduation. We are grateful that the superintendent and the Board of Education have sought a path forward to protect these essential extracurricular programs as well as access to such programs for all students.