The San Jose Unified School District is opening the door to opportunity for hundreds of students across San Jose. Beginning this year, the largest district in the Santa Clara County has decided to try and tear down one of the obstacles students come across when getting ready to take college entrance exams by completely waiving the fee of SAT’s and reducing the price of AP and IB tests.

SJUSD will reduce the price of AP exams. All students, regardless of family income level, will pay $5 dollars for each exam. Students no longer have to pay $95 per exam. (Fee reduction is not statewide) In order to qualify for reduced-price tests, a student’s family must turn in a free/reduced lunch application.

The mastermind behind this, Stephen McMahon, Chief Business Officer of Administrative Services, knows how expensive it could be for students taking multiple AP exams, “We were motivated to make sure that if you had four AP classes, we wanted you to be able to take all four exams.”

Students no longer have to worry about the expensive fees if they are taking multiple exams, this is a wonderful opportunity for all students. For example, if students take four AP classes, that is approximately $400 for AP exams at the end of the year.

Lion Tales reached out to Jen Thomas, President of San Jose Teachers Association, who stated that “a lot of our leaders at the district office recognized that a significant impediment of students taking the kinds of tests to help them be more successful was money and they said ‘what could we do to reduce barriers to college and better careers?’ and they said ‘I know! Why don’t we actually pay some of these ridiculous and ever growing fees for students testing.”

The process to enforcing free and reduced testing wasn’t as difficult as most would think. First, SJUSD has to determine how many students would benefit and also if it is a wise investment of their money. They then had to go through the regular district channel to figure out their ideas and whom it would impact.

Another process was figuring out the numbers of the cost and taking it through their regular channels that requires approval by the board of education. “Which means a public discussion but there wasn’t a lot of discussion because everybody realized it was such a good idea.” Thomas added, “It’s actually pretty easy in comparison to some of the other things we have to do.”

Though their process is clear and effective and doing good for students, they do have some concerns. They are worried that since these tests are free or reduced that students will not take them as seriously as they would if they had to pay money. They believe students take it more seriously when they really have to work for it and pay tons of money for so they “have to see if [students] take it more seriously.” Which was one of Thomas’ main concerns.

However due to all the positive press that SJUSD has received, (an article in the paper and public responses) they are sure that this is a great choice to make and other districts should follow.

“There’s only a couple districts in S.J. who have high school students and whether or not may have money to do that, they should. There are some sources of money, this is actually relatively inexpensive to do” Thomas adds, “SJUSD is buying every seniors cap and gown. Again, something that was fairly inexpensive, would lead to making sure every student had one. We’re just going to make sure kids get the size and color that they need at a really low cost for the district and, will hopefully have a really positive impact on the students.”

“There is a little bit more to why we did it,” McMahon states, “We’re requiring families to fill out the free or reduced priced meal application. They get the $5 price whether they’re income eligible or not, and the reason we did that piece was we didn’t want to destigmatize the form so that it doesn’t become a form that only poor students fill out but every student fills out so no one feels embarrassed or bad about turning in the form.” No one will be discouraged or ashamed about turning in the form because everyone is required to do it, finally all students who aren’t advantaged will be able to take full advantage of every opportunity they can get.

These actions may seem small, but they are guaranteed to make a big impact for hundreds of students across the district and thousands more in the future. For many less fortunate students, this could mean the world, especially for those pursuing a higher education. With the tremendous amount of financial stress heading their way from college expenses, anything truly helps. The reduction of testing costs and elimination of cap and gown expenses is more than just a new policy in our district, it’s a world of opportunity.