The public schools in the Toronto area do not have any fees for ECs. The teachers/parents who coach or run the ECs are volunteers and are not paid. Our Ds participated in volleyball, soccer, cross country, band, orchestra, theatre productions, environmental clubs, rugby, basketball, and probably a few I’ve forgotten.
CA public high school.
~$2500 for snowboard team, varies year-to-year according to how many are on the team. The $ covers lift tickets, bus transportation to practices and races, league and race fees, and certified/ professional coaching. Families separately cover the cost of race helmet and other gear. It is $$$, but S loves it and is very good. The big expense comes down to the cost of bus transportation, but it means we do not have to trek up and down the mountains several times a week in the snow, so… S does not do any other HS sports, but I imagine the fees for other sports are minimal. Ski and snowboard is a special case.
Lift tickets alone can be half of that here in my neck of the woods - even discounted.
We were lucky to only encounter “activity fees” in baby kiddo’s last years of HS.
Small school district - $110/sport (more for alpine ski team) also includes Speech and Debate team. No fee for clubs I believe.
I posted earlier in the thread that we pay for son to participate in soccer. Overall it is up to around 300-350 at this stage and today at a match the head of the sports boosters tried to pressure us into joining boosters for 100. After the match, the coach then was trying to get parents to sell more tickets to the upcoming raffle they will have.
We are fortunate and can pay but I wish they would be so kind to indicate what they need the money for…we are more than happy to pay 1/40 of whatever reasonable costs there are (would even pay a higher percentage if some families could not pay their share) but they never indicate what the needs are despite being asked, so at this stage we have stopped contributing. Frustrating…
I’m sure the booster club has to have a budget and be supervised by someone (school board, school, AD) so you could find out what the money is used for. Travel, replace equipment, scholarships? I know our booster club gave two $1000 scholarships per year.
The problem with the whole ‘1/40th’ of the cost of something is that many teams can’t ask the parents to do that once the payment for the activity is set. Once I paid the $60 ‘pay to play’ (an amount set by the state, with no regard to how much it cost to replace equipment or travel to an OOT game. Our booster club got a lot of money from running the concession stands, and the couple thousand people at football games brought in a lot more profit than the couple of parents buying hot dogs at the girls lax game. The football team got a lot more money from the booster club than the lax team.