BEVERLY — More than 20 delinquent families who have been skimping on school fees will find it's time to pay up.

The Beverly Public School District plans to collect about $30,000 more this year, thanks to a new, more aggressive collection policy aimed at making parents pay full-day kindergarten tuition.

Nobody's going to break your knees, but administrators can take parents with overdue bills to small claims court and can prohibit students from participating in other programs until they have money from everyone in the family who owes it.

"If you don't pay for preschool, you can't go on to full-day kindergarten," said Joan Liporto, director of finance and operations. "If you didn't pay for the elementary music program and your child is selected to be in EEC (the Elementary Enrichment Program) — sorry."

It also affects siblings, so if you don't pay for kindergarten for one child, an older brother or sister could be cut off from activities like high school sports or the jazz band. And if the bill isn't balanced by 12th grade, a student could be banned from senior week and the graduation ceremony.

Parents of full-day kindergartners are by far the biggest scofflaws, with preschool parents coming in second, Liporto said.

Out of the 187 kids enrolled in full-day kindergarten last year, 20 families still owe a total of $21,126. For preschool, six families still owe $4,011. The situation was similar in 2007. Fourteen kindergarten families never squared up, for $23,760, along with three families in preschool, for $5,000.

"In a $50 million budget that may not seem like much," Liporto said. "But it's an equity issue. Everyone else is paying."

Collecting fees for transportation, parking and athletics isn't usually a problem because it's easy to manage, Liporto said. If you don't pay for parking, you don't get a parking pass. If you don't pay the sports fee, the coach can address it. But collecting tuition is the hard part.

All too often people pay the deposit, or for the first couple of months of the program, and then stop, Liporto said. The state doesn't allow public schools to kick kids out for not paying, so there wasn't much the district could do.

"We would send out notices," Liporto said. "I would call people, and they would promise to pay, and never came through."

Now that the district can prohibit program participation and take legal action, it should force families to cough up the dough.

"It's an awkward situation," she said. In tough economic times the school district doesn't want to come down hard on families that can't afford the fees, but the school system also needs to be run like a business, Liporto said.

Along those lines, full-day kindergarten just jumped in price this year from $3,600 to $4,000. The tuition increase alone is expected to bring in an extra $100,000 in revenue, and the aggressive collection policy another $30,000.

Compared to last year, there are 10 fewer kids in full-day kindergarten, but there are also five fewer kids receiving financial aid.

"When it's really sincere and people can't afford it, they can send out a scholarship form," Liporto said. The district accepts applications throughout the year, as financial situations are constantly changing. Although that also means the amount of scholarship money could skyrocket, Liporto said the only choice is to wait and see what happens.

Aggressive collection policy

Here are some of the actions school administrators can take if people don't pay their bills, taken straight from the new policy:

Prohibit participation of the student in the program

Prohibit participation of student or other students in the student's household from participating in any future fee-based program until or unless outstanding balances are resolved

Prohibit student participation in senior week activities or graduation exercises

Referral to small claims court