Peabody schools now charging youth sports groups for lighting

        Is the new look for our schools across the nation.  Who would have thought that dodge ball bad and organized sports in school would add a fee just for the lights used.  Now the norm is an extra charge to parents who's kids play sports, who's kids take the bus, and also the cost of uniforms and sporting equipment.  There was a time when these fees were included in one's property taxes but today, most of that money goes to administration costs and pensions and insurance for the teachers.  Let's not forget the cost of these overly large and pertinacious school buildings being built and the fact that the lowest bidder of these monstrosities gets the job by law.  Repairs come quickly and at an added cost.
    Heck, I did not even have an auditorium or lunch room in my school and that did not hamper the job of teaching by the teachers and learning by the students.  Let's all hope that the change in November will reverse the trend and get our country back to fiscal responsibility and cut the spending and bring back the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic and stop the extra burden placed on our parents who are going broke with extra fees.  It will only get worse if those brain trusts pass a 'cap and trade' bill and it will hurt us as much as when they sent the jobs overseas...............Good God.

PEABODY — A couple of community nonprofits are scrambling to figure out how to pay for almost $12,000 in new fees, resulting from a rule change the Peabody School Committee enacted this year.

The Peabody Basketball Association will be slammed with nearly $10,000 in new "energy fees," which were created to raise money for the schools during a difficult budget year. The basketball association provides programs for about 1,000 children ages 7 to 17 and uses gyms at six Peabody schools from late November through March.

The new energy fee is a $50 flat rate for each time an organization uses a school building during a time when school is not in session. The fees will help the school district offset the expense of heating and lighting the building. 

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