The State Board of Regents approved a fee increase Thursday that’ll keep the 10th through 12th grades of the Price Lab School at the University of Northern Iowa open for at least this year. Regents executive secretary Greg Nichols says parents offered to accept the 100-dollar increase at the university-run school as an alternative to another budget-cutting move.The plan had been to leave the elementary grades open and close the 10-12 grades. Nichols says UNI doesn’t have the money in its budget to support the school like it has in the past. He says the fee increase is combined with budget cuts.The budget cuts are several hundred thousand dollars, while the fee increase will generate around 54-thousand dollars a year. Nichols says the discussions are continuing about what happens to the school after this year.University officials and parents are working on a report of possible long-term options for the school that they’ll present to the Regents in November. Nichols says the issue of what to do with the school involves more than budget issues.He says some people feel the lab school concept should be changed so they have lab classes in a regular school, instead of an entire lab school. The increase will up the fee for the school to 340 dollars per student.
