You have to pay for your kid's schools? You don't have public schools or anything?
Where I live, our taxes goes to the schools but yes we do pay for private schools out of our own pockets. Public schools we do not. But we do pay for their lunches and field trips when money is required, same as school trips that would take a few days away from home such as show choir, band trips.
Public schools are much more expensive than when I was at school. Yes, essentially the government apparently pays for them...BUT...
For example, last year my base resource fees for all subjects combined was around $280...just to access text books for my daughter.
On top of that, her chosen subjects meant that I had to pay for things like film, photographic paper, material....endless list. Essentially, I could count on $40 a fortnight at least in some kind of non upfront stated cost....it just kept coming like relentless waves.
So...I think just instead of saying...oh the resource fee for photography is $30...they should actually state at the beginning of the year there will be additional costs...now, just for that one subject, I probably paid the base resource fee of $30, which sounds cheap, but over the year, the additional things, like film, photographic paper, mounting etc, probably cost me in excess of $300, just for one subject.
Added on to the non stated whole of year subject costs, there were costs such as, camps, dance nights, awards nights....basically anything that my child particpated in incurred a cost that was not stated at the beginning of the year.
My point is, that at least with Private Schools, you pay your fees and EVERYTHING is included...and you can pay them off over the course of the year and plan your budget. You don't get some random request for an unbudgeted item.