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Textbook fees
rise sharply
Despite cost concerns
no options found
By SHARON KILPATRICK
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Fees to rent textbooks will increase dramatically next year, particularly at the high school.
At last week’s regular monthly meeting the School Board approved an increase of $10 per year for all elementary school students except kindergartners and doubled the rate for high school textbooks.
The increases are necessary to build up enough money in the textbook accounts to pay for new books which will have to be adopted for the 1991-92 school year, School Superintendent David Gangel told the board.
Also, he added, this past school year there were funds in the county school budget to subsidize the cost of textbooks. This year such funds were not included in the budget.
This coming school year textbook fees for kindergartners will remain at $29. Fees for first through third graders will increase from $29 to $39. Fees for fourth through seventh graders will increase from $39 to $49. There will be additional costs for required workbooks, particularly for the younger students.
At the high school textbooks have been renting for $4 per book. Next year they will cost $8.20 per book. There are other workbooks at the high school that must be purchased, particularly for business courses, and these fees were increased somewhat.
The board also approved fee increases for gym uniform, school insurance, and parking at the high school. Some fees, including locker rental, remained the same.
At both schools lunches will cost ten cents more next year. The elementary school will charge $1 for lunch, and the high school will charge $1.10.
The high school will be hit particularly hard by textbook adoptions required in 1991. The school is expected to adopt new books for English (grammar and literature), social studies and foreign language. In order to be able to purchase all these books at once, the cost for renting a book would have had to be $10.16, Dr. Gangel said.
The $8.20 fee will allow the school to adopt all the books, but only purchase some of them in time for the; 1991- 92 school year. The rest will be purchased for the 1992- 93 school year, a year when no books are up for adoption, he explained.
School Board Chairman Beverly Massie asked about the impact of going to “whole language” instruction in reading on the textbook fees. Dr. Gangel replied that some books for use in that program had been purchased this past year, and $5,000 is included in the budget to purchase more this year. These will be purchased like “trade books” for the library and “not passed on to the
See FEES, p. 12
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