RC stationery fee gone up 90%

hysterical

I think there is some misunderstanding regarding the levy. From my understanding, the levy includes the following:

1. Stationary kit (about $380): pencils, erasers, paint, crayons, color pencils, drawing pad, homework bag, ruler, etc. Upper primary may include more items. Last year, the students took the items home to be labeled and brought home the leftovers by year end.

2. Swim lesson (about $500): The students will have about 11 swim lessons divided into 2 terms per academic year. The $500 goes to hiring the swim instructors, not for use of facilities. The lessons will take place during PE lessons.

3. Dental or health checkup (about $20)

4. Chinese text books (about $150): They bring home about 3 textbooks and 3 exercise books.

5. Field trip travel and admission expenses: The teachers are very cost conscious and always seek out the mose economical way to go. This year, they bought prepaid octopus cards for students for MTR fare. Other times, they would take the tour buses, and all this cost $$.

6. RAPT membership is not included in the levy.

7. Over the year, they used many booklets for writing, spelling, math, chinese, etc. I would say totaling about 10 booklets = $180?

8. My son told me that they also got their own USB and computer headphones this year, but I haven't seen the items so cannot confirm.

These are just some of the items that I can think of from experience. I believe that the school is doing a great job of being organised and collecting these fees before hand so as to not inconvenience parents for writing a dozen checks for small amounts over the course of the school year. I am very happy with this arrangement.

If anyone has further inquiries, why not just ask the school for a breakdown? Instead of developing negative feelings over something really quite trivial, I think it's best to find out directly from the source.