Participation donation inflation surfaces
Beyond academics, extra curricular activities are the heart of many Peninsula students’ high school careers.
Due to further budget cuts, Peninsula has less money to fund its extracurricular activities. Instead, students are essentially the ones who fund the programs.
The PVPHS athletic packet states, “Donations are voluntary and students who choose not to make a participation donation or who make a donation in an amount different from that listed above will not be denied the right to participate or otherwise penalized in any way.” The donations are not required, so the students must decide for themselves whether or not to make a donation.
“[The advisers] would not know who paid or how much they paid,” Student Store Accountant Pattie Ness said. “[The students] only pay what they can afford.”
Because some students are not able to contribute to their activities, the donations are completely confidential. It’s not required, so people pay however much they can and for that reason it’s kept confidential so to not single out any student who can’t afford to pay a lot.
“The donations go to the district and help pay for the coaches’ salaries and the buses,” Ness said.
Model United Nations, for example, contains 154 participants, but less than half have made a contribution to the club’s needed finances. In addition to the participation donations, students must pay a fee for each conference; many members feel overwhelmed at the amount of money the activity requires.
“The money from the transportation/participation donation is used mainly to provide bus transportation and stipends for our advisers,” said senior Somdeb Banerjee, the secretary-general of Model United Nations. “Without donations from the students, it will be difficult to keep the class from getting cut.”
Sports, as well, require money for equipment, coaches’ salary, and transportation fees.
“And if not enough people [participating in the sport or activity] pay, they won’t be in existence any longer,” Ness said. “Say it’s football, and two people on the team pay—they’re going to cut it.”
Sophomore Andrew Dizon, a member of the football team, believes that participation donations are completely necessary in order to sustain the activity.
“I think that because football requires so much money for equipment, the team members really need to contribute the most they can for the good of the entire team,” Dizon said.
Ultimately these payments go back to the students, and thus they are encouraged contribute the most they can afford.
