Can a public high school charge a registration fee?

Answer 1

Generally, No. But it depends on the provision in your state's constitution requiring a free public education for all. Some states distinguish a registration fee from an activity fee on the grounds that the latter only covers activities that are not required to graduate, and therefore is not a surreptitious way to charge for a free education. Text book fees, transcript fees, and the like, because they apply to all students are usually held by the courts to violate the state's constitution in each case.

But even though in most cases such fees are illegal, school districts often charge them anyway. And since they often go unchallenged for years, the school districts then respond to complaints by saying that it's district policy and that it is a policy of longstanding. More often than not, parents are cowed by such answers and leave the policy unchallenged in the courts. But an illegal policy does not become a legal policy just because a school district has gotten away with it for a long time.