COPE -- Summer school students will be charged tuition this year, the Orangeburg Consolidated School District 4 Board of Trustees decided Monday.

Basic tuition will be $35. Students who qualify for reduced-price lunches will be charged $30 tuition. Students who qualify for free lunches will be charged $25 tuition. The price includes lunch.

"They're fortunate to have summer school this summer. We came close to not being able to have it," said trustee Dr. William O'Quinn.

The program will run Monday through Thursday for four weeks, giving hundreds of children one last opportunity to advance to the next grade instead of having to repeat a grade.

The tuition will raise, at most, around $10,000, which is a fraction of the estimated $120,000 cost of keeping the schools open, the teachers in the classroom, the lunchroom in operation and the buses rolling for an additional 16 days.

The fee is mostly an incentive for parents to encourage students to take summer school seriously and take their studies more seriously during the regular academic year.

In other business, trustees were told that Wise Construction had discovered a $200,000 error in its bid for work including construction of multi-purpose facilities at Branchville, Edisto and Hunter-Kinard-Tyler high schools.

The district accepted Wise's bid of $1,597,300 last week, but Wise notified the district verbally Monday that it wanted to back out of the contract.

Trustees, already concerned about getting the work done as expediently as possible, voted to accept the next low bid of $1,697,000 from C.F. Evans of Orangeburg, contingent upon Wise advising the district in writing of its decision.

That correspondence arrived Tuesday, said Dr. Sandra Tonnsen, superintendent.

Also Monday, Tonnsen asked trustees for "not necessarily a policy, but some guidance" for acting on parents' requests for transfer of a student from one school to another within the district.

Such requests are considered justified in cases of hardship, but that key word is not defined anywhere, Tonnsen said.

About 90 percent of such requests are related to the lack of child care in the area of Norway, Neeses and Springfield area, said Larry Wolfe, assistant superintendent for operations and planning.

Other reasons could include parental employment situations, parental separation or death.

These kinds of hardships are likely to crop up anytime, but the district has a March 31 deadline for requesting transfers. "Do we need a deadline?" trustee Ray Jameson asked, adding that "parents have no control" over many of the circumstances which could lead to such requests.

Trustees decided to review the policies of nearby districts and resume the discussion at their next meeting, Tuesday, May 20.

Also up for discussion May 20 will be an amended budget, Tonnsen said, adding that perhaps the state funding level will become a little clearer by then.

Trustees are bracing for a difficult year in which costs are rising -- for workers compensation, auditing services, insurance and teacher salaries, to name just a few -- and state funding is expected to fall to its lowest level in years, after five cuts in the last three years.

Yet the Legislature and Congress are giving no slack on new and costly accountability measures, such as the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests and the No Child Left Behind Act.

Trustees reviewed a list of cuts already made, including reducing the work force by 26 teachers and leaving three vacant positions empty.

Further cutbacks on the table for discussion -- but not yet approved -- include:

-- Returning four "curriculum facilitators" to the classroom as teachers.

-- Pulling out of the Distance Education Learning Center partnership with Consolidated 5.

-- Canceling an energy management contract, although the company fulfilled its promise of saving the district more than the cost of the contract.

-- Dropping an agreement with the county for attendance services.

-- Halting payment of fees for use of specific instructional software.

-- Eliminating the stipend paid to trustee board members.

-- Reducing the number of mental health counselors and/or nurses.

-- Eliminating district sponsorship for senior trips.

Comparatively it's a small thing, but administrators and trustees alike are irked by students who charge lunches, then refuse to pay the tab.

Beginning last fall, students in grades 9-12 who had delinquent accounts were restricted to partial meals. The administration is recommending expansion of that policy to grades 6-12 in the coming year. Trustees will discuss it May 20.

Trustees don't want to deny food to children because their parents don't pay their bills, but already this year, students owe $9,000, and the district has spent $1,000 in mailing costs, plus about 10 work-hours a week trying to collect the debts, Wolfe said.

"We've set up 40 to 50 conferences with parents, and I've yet to have a parent attend," Wolfe said.

"We can't afford to absorb all of these costs, year after year," Tonnsen said.

T&D Staff Writer Lee Hendren can be reached by e-mail at lhendren@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5552.

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