Boys And Girls Club To Charge Monthly Fee

Due to dwindling contributions and increasing costs, the Boys and Girls Club of Highlands County will start charging a $25 fee per child per month, starting next week.

Nearly 400 children, from kindergarten through high school, attend the four-hour, after-school program, which offers both supervised recreation and help with school work.

The program had been virtually free, with a nominal $10 per year membership per child.

With the majority of the children attending the clubs in Sebring and Avon Park eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches, the decision to start charging $25 per month was tough, said Wally Randall, executive director of the organization.

"That weighed heavily on my conscience and everybody else's in implementing this," Randall said. "But it came down to making a choice of making the Boys and Girls Club viable for generations to come or have it possibly go under. And I don't want to be the one to see it driven into the ground, because then it wouldn't serve anybody."

Parents were informed of the monthly fee about a week ago, and those who have commented have been favorable, Randall said.

"We may lose a few kids and that would break our heart," Randall said. "But I think the overwhelming majority of the parents will be able to swing this in their budget. And I think we will end up being a stronger Boys and Girls Club with stronger parental involvement."

Imposing the monthly fee and launching a new fundraising program should head off projected financial problems, Randall said.

"Depending upon how fundraisers go, we could start slipping into a deficit sometime around the middle of May," he said. "It could be as much as $6,000 to $7,000 short every two weeks.

"We're doing all this to stay away from that scenario," he added. "We don't want to come anywhere near the edge of that cliff."

Parents of children attending the Boys and Girls Club are being asked to enlist one person each month who will donate $20 per year and thus join "The $20 Club."

"We want to kick it off with our parents first, and then we'll kick it off countywide to the general public in March or April," Randall said. "If we can build up to 2,000 or 3,000 people in the community donating $20 a year, you can see how the flow will keep up regardless of the economic times."

The nationwide trouble in the stock market has hurt contributions to the Boys and Girls Clubs. A number of retired county residents had been contributing between $1,000 to $5,000 per year when they received dividend payments on their stock portfolios, Randall said.

"With the financial shake up at the end of last year, some of those contributors not only redid their portfolio but also got out of the stock market," Randall said.

Still, Randall said, the Boys and Girls Club retains support from donors who believe in the organization's mission.

"There is a very valued group of people that when we send out requests for donations, they give generously," he said. "Without them we would have been hurting a long time ago."

Nationwide, the Boys and Girls Clubs call their facilities "the positive place for kids." An in-depth study by a respected taxpayers organization shows that the clubs are making a big difference in many children's lives, Randall said.

"Florida Tax Watch is an independent group, and they did an exhaustive study of all the Boys and Girls Clubs in Florida in 2006," he said. "What their study concluded is that our kids improved (academically) at a faster rate than their peers. They have a higher (school) attendance rate than their peers.

"They have a lower discipline/referral rate, and they have a higher graduation rate," he added. "The report concluded that if every child in the state had the benefit of the Boys and Girls Club experience, there would have been more than 11,000 additional high school graduates that year."

Highlands Today reporter Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com