Watching the conversations unfold following the Board of Education’s sudden decision to charge steep new participation fees for non-enrolled students joining school sports and clubs has been tough. It’s painful to see how fast discussions about our kids’ education have turned into friction and finger-pointing. Whether a family relies on public school, private options, the Hope Scholarship, or traditional homeschooling, the truth is simple: nobody is picking an educational path out of spite.
We are all neighbors raising our families in the very same hollers and small towns, doing the best we can for our children. These are the same kids who share Sunday school benches, run around together at the Apple Festival, play Little League, and ride the same back roads. When they step out onto the field, take the court, or perform on stage, they are just Clay County kids growing up side by side.
The tension we are seeing isn’t caused by parents making choices for their children; it stems from a deeply flawed system that creates unnecessary hardship for local families. Blaming one another doesn’t solve a single problem—it only creates a divide in a community that would thrive if we stood together.
To be clear, no one is claiming Superintendent Dobbins or our Board of Education has an easy job, and I certainly don’t want our hard-working public school teachers and coaches to feel targeted. In my one-on-one conversations with many of them, it’s clear we share the exact same heart for these kids. Unfortunately, most feel they cannot speak up publicly out of fear of professional backlash. We understand our district’s financial pressures, and no one wants Clay County Schools to struggle.
When explaining the reasoning behind these participation fees in a recent article in the Clay Communicator, Mr. Dobbins detailed how a student’s state education allotment is split into academic blocks, resulting in charges of $450 to $680 for a single sport, $679.45 for band or an individual high school class, and $452.97 for clubs like TSA. He acknowledged that charging non-enrolled students these fees helps bridge budget shortfalls and keep the district solvent. While balancing the books is necessary, using sports and clubs as a public bandage for a district-wide budget problem places an unfair burden on kids.
Many argue that Hope Scholarship families are taking funds from public schools or should just “spend the scholarship.” But school funding realities tell a different story: two-thirds of per-pupil funding stays in the local school budget when a child homeschools, and these families continue paying local taxes that maintain public school fields and facilities. In a place where many families are stretching every dollar, asking several hundred dollars per activity might feel like a million dollars to a working household.
The Clay County Schools post regarding these fees explicitly states the funds cover instruction, coaching, transportation, equipment, and facilities, with Dobbins claiming in the Clay Communicator that these fees “do not cover the full cost that the school incurs” and are “comparatively fair with every other county.” But when looking at where participation money actually goes, the reality is eye-opening. Many assume these fees outfit teams with gear or uniforms, but instead they are overwhelmingly forced to fund themselves from the ground up—a reality that several coaches have echoed in recent conversations:
“We genuinely don’t really get help—we fundraise for everything. Our uniforms, gear… all of it. On top of that, they cut coaching pay, so now some are coaching for free while spending their own money to buy what’s needed and feed players who don’t have lunch.”
Our kids and coaches already pour their hearts into car washes, bake sales, and booster clubs to pay for uniforms and gear out of pocket. Adding heavy participation fees on top of that local hustle doesn’t cover team costs—it just asks working families to pay twice, especially when those dollars aren’t even directly returned to the specific sport or club their child is joining.
These aren’t children coming into our community asking for something they have no connection to. They’re already here—playing youth sports together, attending the same churches, and growing up alongside public school kids. Superintendent Dobbins states that he wants these kids to participate, but inclusion doesn’t mean much if the price tag puts the opportunity out of reach.
Since discovering these fees, which the Board dropped just days before sign-ups, I have reached out to state leaders, and they are taking notice of how local boards have interpreted the law. West Virginia state Sen. T. Kevan Bartlett recently shared his concerns about these inflated fee structures, calling them “an outrageous overreach by the Board of Education” and noting that state lawmakers must intervene and forward local concerns to the Senate Education Committee.
West Virginia state Delegate Kathie Hess Crouse echoed those concerns:
“The law allows school boards to charge ‘reasonable fees,’ and some counties have interpreted that language far beyond what I believe the Legislature intended. I will be filing legislation when the legislative session begins to address this problem… Legislators need to hear directly from the families being impacted so we can demonstrate the need for this change.”
While state representatives prepare legislative fixes for the future, our local Board of Education holds the authority to adjust this policy today. They don’t need to wait; they can lead the state by replacing this academic-fraction model with a clear, itemized structure based strictly on direct costs—like individual player insurance or league entry fees. The ball is in their hands.
These kids aren’t asking for special treatment—they just want to play ball, make music, compete, and represent something bigger than themselves alongside the teammates they’ve grown up with. When one of them puts on that uniform, we shouldn’t care where they did their math that morning—they’re representing home.
Amber Ferrebee
Amber Ferrebee is a Clay County native, a homeschool mom of two young boys, and a passionate advocate for community transparency and supporting local youth across all educational paths.
