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The increase could come because of a nearly $21,000 budget cut from the Board of Education. The athletics department needs to make up that money in other places.
In the proposed 2013-14 budget that the Board of Education heard Wednesday night, the extra money was put into participation fees, something neither Athletic Director Carl Charles nor High School Principal Stacey Gross want to see happen.
To make up the difference, the fees would need to be $600 to $700, Charles said. That’s an increase of more than $400 over the current fee of $225 per athlete per sport.
“If you’re going to raise fees, you want to get it to a number where you’re not going to keep coming back and doing this year after year. We’d like to find a number that’s going to work over a long period of time that’s going to be fair,” he said. If the board decides to raise the fees, Charles said a family cap should be considered.
And both Charles and Gross want to have the time to look to booster clubs or other outside monies in order to make it up. “What we’re really saying is that we’d like to look at other ways,” Charles said.
One other way to raise the money would be to ask for rental fees. Sports such as skiing, swimming and hockey have high rental costs. Hockey, Charles said, has the steepest price tag of $73,000 a year in rink rental and ice time.
“We want to work with the booster clubs as we see other districts do, to see if they can support some of that cost for rental fees and hopefully it wouldn’t have to go to specifically the parents in those sports,” Gross said. “We do also need to have a relative balance in what we’re asking from parents and students and what’s the cost of that to the athletic budget.”
The total budget for high school sports would decrease in 2013-14, but only by a little less than $900, even though the town would save nearly $21,000. Finding ways to save the town that money will require the department to be more creative, Charles said.
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