Dodge City ? Forget about getting the children out of the house. The welcome change brought by the first day of school here was the end of “enrollment fees” of $30 or more per child.

The fees were waived beginning this school year, in a nod to cash-strapped parents in the southwest Kansas district where 63 percent of students come from families whose incomes qualify them for free or reduced school lunches.

“Some parents were embarrassed to come to school because of the stigma that was attached to not being able to pay,” said Joyce Warshaw, the principal at Miller Elementary School. She struggled to collect fees from 30 percent to 50 percent of the families in her school every year.

“These parents were having to plan for those fees, and they were already working with a thin budget,” she said.

The fees are charged to cover the cost of instructional materials. They range from $30 for a kindergartner to as much as $200 for a high school student. With multiple children in school, a family’s annual expense can run to hundreds of dollars.

The Dodge City district is now one of the few in Kansas that does not charge the fees.

Officials at the Kansas Association of School Boards or the Kansas State Department of Education couldn’t say how many schools don’t charge fees, because the information isn’t reported to either agency. Both confirmed, however, that Dodge City is following in the footsteps of at least one other high-poverty district in the state Kansas City, Kan., where more than 70 percent of students come from families qualifying for free or reduced lunches.

Dodge City Supt. Gloria Davis said the sheer number of needy students made it impossible to collect fees on a consistent basis.

Although the district collected $105,064 in fees last year, many families didn’t pay. Before Davis joined the district last year, school officials were using a collection agency to get the fees from parents, though they dropped the agency after it collected just a small percentage of what was owed.

“We’re not in the collection business,” Davis said. “We’re in the education business.”

The district made up the loss of the fees by raising its local option budget, which raised far more money than the district had lost by dropping the fees. The increase meant that taxes on a $100,000 house increased by more than $80 per year, and it gave Dodge City the third-highest tax rate in the state last year.

Some taxpayers were not pleased.

“We’re all for seeing the kids getting an education,” said Rich Warner, one of the leading opponents of the tax increase in 2000. “But kids aren’t the only ones in the village.”