Parents who drop their kids off at an elementary or magnet school as early as 7 a.m. and/or pick them up as late as 6 p.m. are in for a fee hike next year if the Evanston/Skokie District 65 School Board accepts a staff recommendation.
Currently, the fee for before-school care is $37 a week and for after-school care is $75 a week for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
But the district is recommending a 7 percent increase beginning in August, which would bring the fee to $40 weekly for before care and $80 for after care. The combined fee for both sessions would rise from $112 this year to $120 next year.
Low-income families would get a break on the fees, as they do now.
The proposed rate increase is on the agenda for tonight’s meeting of the board’s Finance Committee, which would pass its decision along to the full board for official action at a later date.
The fees were last increased in the 2009-2010 school year, but the administration is recommending that the fees increase at a 3-percent-a-year rate in subsequent years.
Superintendent Paul Goren noted in a memo to the committee that the program would operate at a deficit if the current fees were maintained, but that “by increasing the rates, we are more likely to break even.”