Funding HS Sports
Nearly every state has either reduced education funding or has maintained funding at a certain level due to the economic downturn of the nation. School districts have needed to find ways to do more with less, especially in the Sunnyside Unified School District. Most of the funding in our district goes toward technology.
Although technology is a big part of our 21st Century goals, over funding for one area has been detrimental for our athletic programs. This poses a problem because athletics can be an incentive for students and can encourage them to keep up academically to stay eligible to play. Another important aspect of sports is that it teaches valuable life skills such as adversity, teamwork, integrity, honesty, and responsibility. Sports also build school spirit for both athletes and non-athletes. For these reasons it is important that we keep high school athletics going for students and schools.
To improve athletic funding, as an administrator reaching out to local businesses, implementing fundraising campaigns, and organizing booster clubs would be best to financially support the athletic programs at the school. As an administrator it is important to be aware of the schools demographics as well as the school communities needs. The Sunnyside Unified School District has a large number of low-income families, single parent families, and families in which parents have to work two or three jobs to support their families.
Asking parents to pay more money for their children to participate in sports is out of the question (even though our district has the lowest participation fees in the state). An avenue that could help raise money for athletics would be to find local businesses around the community to help support athletic programs. “High schools and other educational institutes everywhere are seeking corporate sponsorship because of district budget cuts, program budgets cuts, and state funding cuts (King, 2006; Pennington, 2004). ” As administrator it would be behoove of them to arket their school and create partnerships with local businesses to fund athletic programs. Collaboration between corporate businesses and schools may help build newfound support within the community for its students, its schools, and its programs. With this type of partnership schools can focus on improving academics and athletics, while proving to be beneficial for the local business. Local business can use their donations as tax deductions and will demonstrate their invested philanthropic efforts in the community.
The daunting reality is that fundraising and schools alone can’t always support athletic programs, “so schools have turned to nontraditional sources, like sponsorship” (King, 2006; Lickteig, 2003). Support within our community is a must in order for our students to succeed. High schools can use corporate sponsorship to keep their athletic programs afloat and for growth. Although coaches are to develop students’ athletic abilities, they oftentimes turn to players to help them in fundraising efforts.
Coaches have to find different ways of fundraising, whether it’s through car washes, cookie dough sales or value cards, these fundraising endeavors help their teams pay for better equipment and gear that will give their team a winning edge. In a perfect world each program would be able to self-sustain expenses for their own equipment, but unfortunately that is not the case for the staff at Desert View. The traditional way of using capital funds is for each sport receives capital monies every 3 years.
This is not nearly enough to sustain yearly tournament fees, uniforms, equipment and out of town trips to play other elite teams in the state. Fundraising is not an easy task especially if the players and parents do not buy into what the coach is trying to do. As an administrator a plan would be proposed for all athletic teams to fundraise together, this would eliminate competition between athletic teams within one school site and there would be less conflict of teams selling the same items for their teams.
Also all monies would be deposited into one athletic account, which is then distributed evenly to all athletic programs. All athletic programs would be mandated to attend and participate in all fundraising events. To help plan and carry out these events, a Jag Booster club would be created and comprised of parents from each sports team. The booster club would meet once or twice a month to: go over budget plans, create new fundraising ideas, set schedules for different teams to host the snack bar for up-coming athletic events, etc.
The Jag Booster club would help alleviate all the pressures from the coach and athletic director by taking on these fundraising roles. The booster club would also oversee any special requests by coaches who ask for more funds for certain equipment and/or for trips. The ultimate decisions will be based upon the discretion of booster club to what will be in the best interest for the entire athletic program. Not only will it get more parental involvement within our schools, but it will also bring our sports programs together to build one common goal of raising funds for all of the athletics.
In conclusion, though our school district is facing many budgetary constraints, implementing local business sponsorships, creating fundraising campaigns, and building an overall team booster club, our athletic programs will be able to become more effective in the way we raise funds for not only one program, but all programs, thus allowing coaches to concentrate on coaching, students to concentrate on being student-athletes and achieving excellence
References
- Pennington, B. (2004, Oct. 18). Reading, writing and corporate Sponsorships. New York Times, p. 1 Lickteig, Melissa. (2003).
- Brand-name schools: The deceptive lure of corporate-school partnerships. The Educational Forum, 68, no. 1, p. 44-51. King, David. (2006, November 30).
- In hunt for revenue, high schools turn to advertising. San Antonio Express News, 2006. Retrieved February 22, 2007, from Lexis Nexis Academic Database.
