CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Pay-to-Play Fees for School Sports Teams

One line in the Riverbend School Board’s draft budget has eclipsed all others: a proposed $250 fee for every student joining a high school sports team. Escalating costs for buses, referees and insurance have left the board nearly $900,000 short, and athletics, which lie outside the required curriculum, can no longer be shielded.

Trustee Helen Marchetti, who chairs the budget committee, insists nobody relishes charging children to play. The alternative before trustees, however, is eliminating junior teams altogether. “I’d sooner ask families to contribute than tell a fourteen-year-old there’s no team for her.” Families receiving income assistance could apply for a full waiver.

That provision scarcely reassures Raymond Tessier, who has coached basketball at Eastview Secondary for nineteen years. “In my experience, the students most in need of a waiver are the least likely to request one,” says Tessier. “A teenager will abandon a sport before handing his coach a form announcing that his family is struggling.” Tessier acknowledges that tournament travel has grown expensive and that teams could finance out-of-town trips themselves, but he maintains that the basic right to try out should never carry a price tag.

Priya Natarajan, whose two children play volleyball and soccer, is more pragmatic. Having already spent several hundred dollars annually on club fees and equipment, she considers $250 modest. Her condition is transparency: the money must demonstrably reach referees and buses rather than vanish into general revenue, and the board should publish how many waivers it grants each year.

Dr. Alain Fortier, a sociologist who studies youth sport, accepts that shortfalls are genuine. Some cost recovery, he grants, is probably inevitable. His research, however, found that in districts introducing flat fees, participation among students from lower-income neighbourhoods fell by roughly a fifth within two years, waivers notwithstanding. “Waivers look generous on paper,” he observes, “but they depend on families identifying themselves.” He proposes a fee scaled to household income and applied automatically through existing school records, singling out no one.

Marchetti says she is receptive to amendments, but warns that every dollar trimmed from the fee must be found elsewhere.

I played three sports at Eastview in the early 2000s, and Mr. Tessier knows exactly what he is talking about. When my parents hit a rough patch in Grade 10, I would sooner have 6. Choose…filled out a waiver formhung up my sneakersasked for a loanswitched to a cheaper club than admit it to anyone at school.

That said, Ms. Marchetti is no villain. The board is in a genuine bind, and she is right that 7. Choose…the alternative is worsesports belong in the curriculumteams should pay for buseswaivers will reach the needy. What troubles me is the flat rate. Dr. Fortier’s research shows that even with waivers in place, 8. Choose…the shortfall persistsclub fees begin to climbthe poorest players disappearwaiver requests multiply. His idea of 9. Choose…letting teams raise travel moneypublishing waiver numbersa scale applied automaticallycharging only players who travel strikes me as far fairer, because no teenager would ever have to ask for charity.

And if parents like Ms. Natarajan do end up paying, the least the board can do is make sure their money 10. Choose…is spent on teamscovers other families’ waiversgoes into general revenuefunds out-of-town tournaments.