Houston parents publicly objected last month after their children’s elementary school charged them fees when they were late to pick up their children after school.
The fees—quickly suspended by the Houston school district days after they made local headlines—were an unusual solution to an everyday problem that raises knotty questions for school and district leaders: What should they do when parents are persistently tardy to the pickup line?
In deciding how to respond, principals have to weigh competing priorities of maintaining strong relationships with families and ensuring child well-being against the need to protect staff morale and time, school and district leaders said.
“I think that when you put more than one person in a location whose arrival and leaving is contingent on somebody else, then you always have potential for an issue,” said Chris Fleming, superintendent of the Senatobia, Miss., district, which charges fees for late pickups from after-school child care, but not from the regular school day.
Late pickup fees, often levied by private child care and preschool programs, appear to be far less common in public schools, though there is no national data on the issue. In Houston, Herrera Elementary School’s policy gave parents a 30-minute grace period after the 3 p.m. student dismissal, after which parents were charged $1 per child for every minute they were late, local news station Fox26 reported.
“Even if you’re there on time, the pickup line will make it hard for most parents to get their kids before 3:30,” said one mother, who told the station she was charged $62 for picking up her two children at 4:01. The school told her late fees help pay staff who stay after hours to supervise students, she said.
“It is not HISD policy to charge parents late fees for student pick-up,” a spokesperson for the Houston district, which serves 187,000 students, said in a statement. “When the district was made aware of this issue at one school, the practice was immediately discontinued, and all families were refunded.”
Though late fees are uncommon, local news coverage shows other instances at charter schools and district-run schools in several states.
At the Richland 2 district in Columbia, S.C., middle school parents were charged a $15 fee for pickups after a 30-minute grace period, news station WIS10 reported in 2023. Some of the district’s elementary and middle schools continue to charge those fees to cover the cost of student supervision, a spokesperson told Education Week, and some charge families to place their children in a regular after-school care program if they are late. Schools offer varying grace periods before those fees kick in, she said.
Renton, Wash., schools may charge late parents $25 an hour for late pickup, its pickup policy says, though it’s unclear how often it enforces it.
Teachers provide impromptu child care
The strain of providing impromptu child care after school hours is a real concern for teachers and school staff. Experts on teacher morale say teachers should be viewed as skilled professionals rather than care workers. However 26 percent of teachers responding to Education Week’s 2024 State of Teaching survey reported they’d been asked to complete non-instructional supervision duties that they do not believe should be the role of a teacher.
Those tasks become even more of a strain when they pop up unexpectedly after school hours.
“People have to remember, the teachers overseeing these students, they have lives, they have families,” said Fleming, the Senatobia superintendent. “The connection between parents and the school is the lifeblood of any school program. You just have to set boundaries.”
School fees of all kinds are governed by varying state laws that set limits on what materials and services schools can charge for and what additional costs may infringe on a student’s right to a free public education—like charging for textbooks. Under California law, for example, schools can charge fees for optional costs like damaged textbooks, parking on school grounds, or child care before and after school. In Virginia, districts must set fee policies that allow for the waiver or reduction of costs for families experiencing economic hardship.
Whether or not late pick-up fees are permissible, they may not be effective because parents who show up late are often stretched thin financially or working multiple jobs, said Cody Killin, a middle school principal in Lauderdale County, Miss.
“What happens if there’s no money to pay that fine?” he said.
The school offers plenty of grace to parents for the occasional late pickup, Killin said. But repeated, lengthy delays require some intervention. Those patterns may indicate that a family needs additional community supports, like access to an after-school program. Or they may be a warning sign that a family is experiencing homelessness and qualifies for additional school services, like special transportation so that their child can stay in the same school even if their family moves further away.
Killin will typically call parents who are frequently late to check in.
“You say, ‘Is there anything going on that the school needs to be aware of?’ Sometimes those questions are tough. You hear the sad stories,” he said. “Most of the time, parents are willing to work with us, and it’s been well-received.”
