Funding dries up for school athletics programs As staff members of the Kentucky Department of Education were completing their audit of the Fleming County School District, school board members met Sept. 25 in a special session and took aggressive action to cut spending. There was lengthy discussion about the current crisis and how to implement a system of financial accountability regarding athletic gate receipt finances, overall athletic spending and much more. The district will likely be able to squeak through the year without completely cancelling any necessary sporting or extracurricular activities, but the money for anything other than what is absolutely required by law, simply doesn’t exist. The money isn’t there and neither is any real system of tracking the spending or receiving of district money. “We still do not have a tracking system I’m pleased with but we’re working on it,” Superintendent of Fleming County Schools Tom Price said as the meeting began with discussion about the middle school and high school ‘Activity Fund’. Gate receipts from all sporting events historically went into the middle school or high school Activity Fund and from that fund, the school principals, and athletic directors-and apparently from some discussion in recent meetings-other unnamed people-had the means of withdrawing money from those funds to spend as they saw fit. There has been confused discussion in recent board meetings and within the district about where funding for multiple team uniforms came from, how and who paid for out of state or distant trips to sporting events and local contracts with various businesses and entities to perform tasks or services for some sporting teams and events and other discrepancies with district funding and financial accountability. Those days are over and Price was clearly upset about a high school athletic organization that was considering spending $700 for “cleaning” in association with their group. “I’ll be point blank, we’re not here to make pro athletes,” Price said. “We’re here to get our kids ready to go to work and ready to go to college. And we’re going to make them as career and college ready as possible.” That ultimately boils down to one clear reality. “We have to do without,” Price said “We are on a day-to-day basis (with funding any activity).” Price later said of the dire situation that he “worried every day if we are going to survive this school year.” Price recommended, and the Board unanimously voted in favor of, rescinding a previous board vote that put $66,000 in the high school Activity Fund and $10,000 in the middle school Activity Fund. Now all Activity Fund requests will have to go through Price and he made it clear that he would not be frivolous with the spending. Price will be working with High School Athletic director Tony Roth and Simons Middle School Athletic Director Mary Brandenburg on developing policies, boundaries, guidelines and limits, on all spending for athletic groups. According to discussion no such policies, guidelines, boundaries and limits, ever existed or were followed in the past. Board members voiced support of Price’s recommendation. “We’re not saying a team can’t go to Louisville and compete,” Board Member Eddie Ward said. “But if the teams do, then (they and boosters) will have to pay for it.” Price was adamant about not repeating past sports funding blunders. “We’re not doing it anymore,” he said while warning board members that in the weeks and months to come they would be receiving a lot of complaints and calls. “Things have changed and it’s the reality of the times. We’ve cut classified positions (within the school district) to the point where we are not serving some students in an acceptable way. But we are going to overcome the problems we have created… We’ll keep better records.” The main function of the school board is to hire and assess the district’s superintendent. They have no interaction with the day-to-day decisions in the school district.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 19:20:29 +0000
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