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SPANISH FORK — Nebo School District in Utah County may hire a debt collector to recoup losses after parents failed to pay about $100,000 worth of fees, officials said.
Parents often owe fees for student lunches, field trips and school competitions, but some ignore the bills and never pay them, said Nebo School District spokeswoman Lana Hiskey. The district is looking into hiring a debt collector in order to continue funding those school programs, she said.
Before sending the debt collector, however, the school would first go to the family and find out what their situation is, Hiskey explained. If the parents can’t pay or have run into a financial crisis, the school will set up a payment plan or offer a reduced fee for things like school lunches.
Parents who occasionally forget to pay a fee or who aren’t able to come up with the money will not be harassed by a debt collector, she stressed.
“This debt collector ... is really for those fees that parents are just blatantly not paying. They have the ability to pay, but they’re disregarding the bill notices,” Hiskey said.
The school district has been researching the idea over the last three or four years, and the school board is leaning favorably toward the initiative, Hiskey said. A few of the other larger school districts in Utah employ a debt collector, and the board felt it would be prudent for Nebo, the sixth-largest school district in the state, to follow suit, she added.
This debt collector ... is really for those fees that parents are just blatantly not paying. They have the ability to pay, but they’re disregarding the bill notices.
–Lana Hiskey, Nebo School District
“Educators really aren’t in the business of collecting bills. Educators really are about educating students, and they want the best for their students,” Hiskey said. “It really does go against an educator's innate personality. ... They want to do what’s best, and, because of that, they allow students to have these incredible experiences, but then they have a hard time gathering those fees.”
Teachers also seek to maintain good, working relationships with their students’ parents, and being teacher and debt collector in one can sever that bond, Hiskey said.
“We want parents to know that we really want to be their partners in education with their children,” she added.
Related:
Unaffordable Utah: Should public schools charge students $71M in fees?
In Utah, heading back to school doesn’t just include buying new shoes and backpacks. It also means parents forking over hundreds of dollars in fees to register their children at public schools.While the school district has tried to continue funding school programs using supplementary means like vending machines or fundraisers, that requires a lot of work and manpower — and doesn’t always cover the cost, Hiskey said, especially when that cost has reached about $100,000.
“We really do want to get those funds coming in. We don’t want it to hurt or impede the programs that we have in place, and that’s really what it does,” she said.
Hiskey is unsure when this change would be put in place if the school board votes in favor of the initiative, but it may be within the next several months, she said.
The Nebo School District includes 42 schools in the southern part of Utah County.
