With parking fees in place, Scarborough students vow to ‘Boycott the lot’

Jack Sullivan, senior class president at Scarborough High
School, argues before school board members Thursday against
 a plan to impose a $50 annual parking fee on students
beginning this fall. The school board adopted the fee, which
 also can be paid at $25 per semester, by a 6-1 vote.

SCARBOROUGH — A drive by Scarborough High School students to overturn a school board decision at the ballot box may fizzle out before it’s begun.

Following a 6-1 decision by the school board Aug. 15 to charge students a $50 annual fee for the privilege of parking in the high school’s 687-space lot, Jack Sullivan, the senior class president, vowed two simultaneous protests.

“The rallying cry is ‘Boycott the lot, flood the bus,’” said Sullivan, of one option. In that protest, set to launch when school starts next week, students will try to prove their point that they actually save taxpayers money by driving their own vehicles, given the amount it might cost to ferry all 3,100 students in the district by bus.

The other option, Sullivan said, is to try to force a referendum vote via petition, in hopes of overturning not only the $50 parking fee, which can also be paid at $25 per half, but also fees students pay to participate in athletics and extracurricular activities, which range from $25 at Wentworth Intermediate School to $100 per student at the high school, with a $300 per-family cap.

Petitioning was to have begun last Friday at SummerFest, but the town declined to issue forms until the town attorney weighs in. According to Town Manager Tom Hall, it’s not clear the fees can be eliminated via petition.

“I’m not looking to put roadblocks up,” said Town Manager Tom Hall on Friday, “there are just things we need to look at.”

For example, Hall said, Scarborough’s charter allows residents to take items to a vote, either to overturn a council decision, or in the face of the council’s decision to act on some item. However, the charter bars residents from overruling budget decisions.

“I think that’s as it should be,” said Hall. “To run a representative democracy by petition, you could really screw things up. I mean, what if voters decided to eliminate the police department?”

On the other hand, the charter is silent regarding the right of residents to petition school board decisions, financial or otherwise.

Hall said the town attorney is scheduled to issue an opinion this week on the legality of any attempt to turn back the parking fee. However, even if students can’t bind the school board with a referendum vote, he said the attorney may well argue that the students have a right to conduct a straw poll, of sorts.

“That certainly could be meaningful, especially this November given the high turnout rate expected,” said Hall. “They could wield a very powerful voice.”

If the referendum is cleared, Sullivan and his cohorts will have very little time to act. Town Clark Tody Justice said Tuesday that in order to make the November ballot, students will need to collect signatures from 2,377 registered Scarborough voters and return those to her for validation by Sept. 21.

“We feel confident that we can do that,” said Sullivan, noting that he and his classmates quickly collected 500 signatures urging the school board to kill the fee on its own.

“We just don’t feel fees like that are the way a school ought to be run,” said Sullivan.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am,” said Sullivan’s mother, Karen. “He’s speaking not only for all the students in this town by all of the parents and taxpayers. We’re all behind him.”

The parking fee was part of a plan baked into the school departments $38 million budget voters approved May 15 to raise $50,000 in revenue via new student fees as a small offset to declining state and federal subsidies.

The fees help make up for lost state and federal subsidies, said Superintendent Dr. George Entwistle, while school board Chairman Robert Mitchell said they fill a hole left in the revenue budget when the $200,000 income from existing student fees was marked down to the $150,000 actually collected.

The Scarborough school board votes 6-1 Thursday to impose
 a $50 annual parking fee on high school students, with only
 Jacquelyn Perry, left, dissenting. Pictured, from left, are Perry,
school board members John Cole and Jane Wiseman, Assistant
Superintendent Jo Anne Sizemore, board Chairman Robert
Mitchell, Superintendent Dr. George Entwistle III, and board
members Kelly Murphy, Aymie Hardesty and Christine Massengill.

On July 19 the board voted against hiking those activity fees and instead focused their attention on the price for parking. In response to the resulting protests, school officials walked back the proposal at an Aug. 8 policy committee meeting, when the full-year fee was halved from the $100 first envisioned.

But that was as far as board members were willing to go. At Thursday’s meeting, Jacquelyn Perry could not convince a single director to back her amendment to dump parking from the fee schedule entirely. She subsequently stood firm as the only director to vote against the proposal.

More than 60 parents and students attended the Aug. 15 school board meeting in hopes of talking directors out of instituting the fee. Of they many who rose to speak, only one, Paul Koziell, voiced support for it.

“It’s a user fee for maintenance of the lot, and it should be paid by people who use it,” he said.

Koziell’s fellow Lillian Way resident, Mike Gilbert, disagreed, although he, too, told the school board, “We’re not against you. We appreciate everything you do.”

Gilbert said all student fees should be eliminated, with the lost revenue added to the regular budget, to be spread across the tax base.

However, Sullivan said he and his fellow students oppose burdening taxpayers, or cutting teaching positions, which Entwistle raised as a possibility, although one held out nebulously, with no specifics. When asked, he declined to name specific jobs that could be on the chopping block, especially given that the policy committee has already left $25,000 on the table by cutting the parking fee in half before the final vote. That’s a fair amount of money, Mitchell said, considering that the school department ended last year with less than $200,000 left from its budget.

Meanwhile, Sullivan said there is plenty of room to cut in administration costs and technology purchases.

“Every classroom has projectors and half of them are never used,” he said. “For myself, I’m perfectly OK with a good teacher armed with a piece of chalk.”

However the fight on fees ends, everyone at Thursday’s meeting expressed, from parents, to school officials, to board members, expressed admiration for Sullivan and his fellow students, who made their case with well-reasoned arguments and a respectful tone.

“I’m so proud of all of you,” said Bayberry Lane resident Linda Brady, “and I don’t even know any of you.”