Frisco ISD is suspending its student athletic fee for one year while it studies other fees collected at the district and campus level.
The district will review the appropriateness of the programs charging the fees. It will also look at whether those fees should be reduced, increased or eliminated based on available funding.
The athletic fee, which was implemented in the 2017-18 school year, was $100 for middle school students and $200 for high school students, regardless of how many sports a student participated in.
FISD will take a $1.7 million hit without the fees in the 2019-20 school year, the district stated.
"The reason that we elected to suspend the athletics fee for a year was to ease some of the burden on students and their parents in terms of how many fees that they pay," FISD Chief Financial Officer Kimberly Smith said. "That one is an easy one to suspend because it's collected at the district level, and it's set by the district, and we know it's consistent across campuses."
Other student fees are set at the campus level, Smith said. So the district will have a committee do a "deep dive" into the fees to see whether they are consistent across campuses and how the fees are being used, she said.
"The idea is by the next budget cycle in the spring, we'll have a comprehensive fee proposal to bring before the board as part of the budget," Smith said.
The athletic fee could return in the next school year. It has helped pay for security, transportation, game officials and laundry for athletics programs.
This review comes after the district's Long-Range Planning Budget Subcommittee recommended that the district re-evaluate all students fees.