The Rising Cost of Public School Fees

As public school students head home for the summer, it's time for their parents to start worrying about how they're going to pay for next year.

Pay? For public school?

Unfortunately, yes, Just as Ron Weasley's parents worried when they had to buy five sets of Gilderoy Lockhart's entire oeuvre for their offspring to study at Hogwart's in "Harry Potter," parents of children in many public schools nationwide are worrying about how to pay for algebra workbooks, Spanish classes and "technology fees," along with the athletics and arts fees that have become par for the academic course in the past decade.

A budget that once covered pencils, notebooks, Trapper Keepers and the occasional spendy calculator has expanded to include all sorts of other nitty-gritties, like printer ink for composition teachers and fees to participate in the school band. In Palouse, Wash., Patti Green-Kent says her kids have to pay for their own band instruments as well as paying a fee just to participate; to help out, her family regularly donates used instruments for other band members to use. Science classes require a $15 lab fee (and science classes are required).

"It's the principle," Green-Kent says, "not the money" -- but the principle rankles.