Regular School Board Meeting June 19, 2012

Sorry for the tardiness of this post, but the Little Bear fire took a big chunk of my time.

I did make it to the board meeting Tuesday evening, and have posted the podcast. Here is the Agenda.

It was also the official passing of the keys from outgoing Superintendent Tommy Hancock to incoming Superintendent Travis Dempsey. I believe Mr. Dempsey's first official day is July 1...but he can get into the building before that, so I imagine he'll be around once he gets moved into his new house, which he was hoping would happen this weekend.

No Funding in Budget for Middle School Sports AND Pay to Play next Year

As it stands right now, there is no funding for Middle School sports AND the school expects pay-to-play to be implemented. Those preparing and approving the budget apparently made the ASSUMPTION that the Sideliners Booster Club would pay to keep the Middle School sports program going AND offset the pay-to-play expenses. Unfortunately, they never asked or consulted anyone on the Sideliners board about this. I have heard "approximate" numbers from the school of $7000 for Middle School PLUS another $5000 for pay to play. Oh, and they want to add football to the Middle School next year, which will be about $2000 more. Does anyone have a CLUE how many corn dogs, cookie doughs, car washes, pizza coupons, gun raffles, pancake breakfasts, golf tournaments, t-shirts, root beer floats, hamburgers, etc. etc. Sideliners has to sell to raise $14,000?!

I don't think the majority of people know just how much work went into fundraising efforts during the entire summer last year to raise the funds to keep the sports program going in the Middle School while also funding many activities in High School sports. Unfortunately, most of that work was done by very few parents and students and a handful of very generous benefactors. To put it bluntly, those parents were "rode hard and put up wet." Many of them are burned out. All of us have jobs, family and commitments. Without some fresh faces and enthusiastic Middle School parents/students, there will either be no Middle School sports, or a hefty pay-to-play per athlete. We simply do not have enough people volunteering, and I find any PRESUMPTION that those same parents can bust butt this summer to bail out Middle School sports and pay-to-play insulting.

Sideliners has asked the school for an accounting of where the money we donated last year was spent and how much, if any, is left. We have yet to receive that information.

The robo call that the school put out Sunday evening said athletics was "heavily affected" in the new budget. Unless the school can scrounge around in its budget and find $14,000 or so, I'd say heavily affected is optimistic. But who knows, they found $10,000 to pay a consultant when they supposedly didn't have that money either.

I'm not going to post the phone number for the Sideliner's president on a public forum. His number was given in the robo call. But if you want to volunteer or get involved I'd be glad to email it to you. I spoke to him yesterday, four days after the robo call. Want to guess how many people had called him to volunteer their services? None.