Pay up to stay after

 

Should the parents of high school students who habitually find themselves in detention have to pony up for the classroom space and teacher oversight? It’s a pay-for-going-astray business model currently being considered by at least one New Jersey school district.

Two members of the Nutley Board of Education say the district spends $10,000 a year in overtime fees and maintenance costs to keep a detention center open after school, and at a time when every dollar counts, that’s too much. Their solution: Parents of students who make detention a regular stop should have to help foot the bill. The Associated Press reports that a district lawyer is looking into whether such a program would be legal.

Up until now, says the New Jersey School Boards Association, no state school district has charged for the cost of detention. If the idea gets adopted, the Nutley board members probably would have to set guidelines to determine how much detention is too much, and what the fee structure would be.