School Fees seem to be a hot topic as students head back to school.

These fees are subject to vary a bit school to school due to different programming, but cover extra curriculars like sports teams and band, field trips, and course fees.

Drew Chipman, assistant superintendent of the Foothills School Division, says these extra curriculars or trips are supplementary to students education.

"Football teams and basketball teams, or going to Calgary to the zoo or going to a play or something, that supplements and augments the students learning experience," he says. "If we didn't have fees to pay for those things then it would be difficult to provide those opportunities out of the regular funding that we receive, so it is important."

Chipman says the fees have only changed once during his time with the division, which was add to add a technology fee for extra bandwidth.

He says the division tries to take into consideration the needs of parents.

"That's why we haven't upped our fees in a significant period of time because we don't want to be to the point where we're making it onerous on parents to try and put their kids in some of these additional classes that cost more to operate so we've tried our best to keep those to a minimum."

Chipman adds the fees the division has they do feel are important and help provide the best learning opportunity for students.