CHARLO — After much discussion during the June and July meetings, the Charlo Board of Education approved the 2010-2011 student activity fee at the July 20 regular meeting.

Starting this fall, students will be required to pay an activity fee of $30 to participate in extracurricular activities. The fee is a one-time cost for every student in sports, music, drama, and any other activity that is purely voluntary and does not earn a credit toward graduation. The student activity fee will also serve as a season ticket, which would normally cost a student $30.

Trustee Duane Weible said, “I think it’s worth trying.”

 Some feared that requiring students to pay such a fee could discourage participation, but school administrators said they need to do something to “pick up the slack” to pay for the rising cost of travel, equipment and coaches salaries.

“When I was coaching football, everybody knew, if a kid couldn’t buy cleats, he could come to us and we would get it done,” high school principal Steve Love said. “Every kid on the field had cleats.”

While it is not likely to generate the schools a significant amount of additional money, Love said it should at least help to cover a few weekends of tournaments.

“We’re just trying to tighten the net,” he said.

In addition, family season ticket prices rose $10 and season ticket prices went up $5 for both students and adults.

Activity ticket prices for double varsity games were raised $1. The school used to charge for pre-school-aged children, but dropped that fee entirely.

In other news, the board accepted the changes in the handbook as proposed by Love at last month’s meeting. The school’s cell phone policy was of particular concern. In the end, the school’s policy remained the same, no cell phones during the instructional day, but the consequences section of the handbook was revised.

“It should be on a case-by-case basis,” Love said. “Let the punishment fit the crime.”

Director of Transportation, Doug Hertz, was hired and all out of district students were accepted, bringing the school’s projected enrollment totals to 148 students in grades kindergarten through sixth, 46 students in seventh and eighth, and 99 students in the high school.

Trustees discussed job descriptions for classified staff and primary budget cuts, which will be voted on at a special meeting on Aug. 10. Impending state budget cuts could influence the boards’ decisions, as monies from the state are the school’s largest  source of funding, by far.

“We don’t know what the legislature is going to do,” trustee Shannon Murphy said. “They’re going to make cuts, we just don’t know where.”

The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Aug. 17.