School Committee Aiming to Prevent Increase in Fees for Athletics

The school committee will likely see themselves at the metaphorical fork in the road soon when a decision has to be made about funding for the athletic department.

After listening to a presentation on the current state of the athletic department, the school committee were given two options for funding: either raise the fees to maintain the budget allocation or take a look at the current offerings and increase the department’s allocation if there is a desire to maintain all the program.

According to athletic director Bill Martin, about 58 percent of the budget comes from the school department while the rest comes from user fees, boosters,  and fundraising efforts from the teams.

Voting for new fees was found to be unpopular with the committee.

“I don’t like the idea of relying on students fundraising, I don’t like the idea of relying on boosters for things that are essential to the programs,” chair Emily Smith-Lee said. “I would be very uncomfortable to raise the feeds just to cover the basic offerings."

Vice-char Veronica Wiseman also was uneasy with the every team for themselves culture of fundraising.

“What is compelling to me is that this community of boosters is being eroded by this culture that we’ve enabled which is that kids are kinda out for themselves. So if the football team can get a good amount of money because of their golf tournament and they’re in good shape, a team next to them is in the poor house,” Wiseman said. “It could be same effort but different results.”

Committee member Jonathan Hitter wanted to see how much more the school district would have to pitch in before making a decision.

“I want to know what that number is and what would be sacrificed from an education standpoint. If we do that then something would have to but cut from the budget,” Hitter said.

Keeping with the theme of fees, the committee did get some good news for other fees in the district. A recommendation was made to maintain the current structure for transportation, kindergarten, and early childhood center fees.