City trustees put school fees under microscope

More city school boards are reconsidering their add-on fees for families — be they for classroom supplies or field trips.

Manitoba Education has not issued a formal directive to reduce such charges, but representatives have expressed support for lowering them since the NDP took office in October 2023.

Leaders from both St. James-Assiniboia and Winnipeg took note of that messaging and acted accordingly as they finalized their latest budgets.

Board chair Holly Hunter called changes in St. James, including increased transparency related to such fees, “the right thing to do.”

“There hasn’t really been a review of the fees that we’re charging to families in a really long time,” said Hunter, a mother in the division and teacher who works in another part of the city.

Senior administration is participating in a review of all the fees collected by 26 schools in west Winnipeg throughout an academic year.

Early results, which found there has long been a patchwork of different bills sent to parents, have informed changes that to take effect in the fall.

Elementary students will be charged $50 per year for learning expenses in 2025-26. Half-day kindergarten students will be asked to pay $35 each.

St. James has set a new universal middle years rate of $30 per pupil. That sum does not include an additional band or art fee that may be levied.

The division is also eliminating a “fundraising fee,” a flat payment that went up to $20 and had been charged to households if their school opted out of running a local year-in fundraiser.

Manitoba’s largest school division, which has 79 schools in inner-city and central Winnipeg, has set strict parametres on fundraising.

WSD parent councils can no longer collect donations for field trips, art supplies or anything else that is deemed “outside the purview of public education.”

Starting next year, the division will cover the tab for lunch supervision and field trips and continue asking principals not to charge any more than $40 per student for school supplies.

Superintendent Matt Henderson said WSD began leveraging “the power of our tender” this year to buy learning materials in bulk and reduce fees.

His former employer, the Seven Oaks School Division — which is also where the current deputy minister of education previously worked — has long touted this approach.

“Fees can be a barrier to kids coming to school. We want to make sure that we’re completely barrier-free,” Henderson said.

Sandy Nemeth, president of the Manitoba School Boards Association, noted that the late education minister made clear that moving away from such fees was “very important.”

During the association’s 2024 convention, then-minister Nello Altomare, a career educator who died on Jan. 14, spoke about his goal to lower the financial burden associated with them.

While Nemeth acknowledged charges put “unsustainable pressure” on certain families, she said status quo funding makes it challenging for divisions to waive them.

“If this is something we all value, it should be funded accordingly,” she said.

Public school funding is up 3.4 per cent overall for 2025-26.

“School divisions prioritize serving their families in ways that are affordable and we want to support them in doing that and we believe that our funding announcement this year does exactly that,” Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said Wednesday.

Schmidt said she and her colleagues “fully support” anything boards can do to reduce barriers for students and their families, such as school meal programs.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca