High school sports: Athletics starting down the barrel yet again

Spectators listen during a PVUSD board meeting Wednesday night.

WATSONVILLE — Nothing’s settled yet, but unless the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees reverses its course dramatically, high school sports across the district could be facing a nearly 80 percent drop in funding beginning next school year.

Board members were presented with a budget proposal Wednesday night at their meeting detailing possible ways to shed the $17 million the district needs to cut from its 2009-10 plan. The proposed cuts are still, at this point, just hypothetical. The board has until March 13 to agree to a budget for next school year.

Buried among the line items of potential cuts — which include the elimination of most school bus routes, school librarians and nurses — high school sports funding was proposed to be slashed by $616,351 across the district’s three high schools, Aptos, Pajaro Valley and Watsonville.

The three schools’ athletic departments entered this school year already down 25 percent from their 2007 funding. That original cut translated to roughly $86,000 per school, leaving each of the three schools with approximately $344,000 in funding for athletics. Should the board of trustees adopt the proposed cut to athletics as is, each school would be forced to make do with $52,550.

“We have no course but to play the hand we were dealt,” said Barney Finlay, the associate superintendent for the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, bemoaning the state’s ongoing inability to resolve its fiscal budget.

Among the speakers at Wednesday’s board meeting, there seemed to be little, if any, support for retaining funding for high school or middle school sports, which are also set to lose $200,000 in funding. Speakers instead focused their frustrations on the elimination of school libraries and bus drivers.

“It’s more important to have libraries stay open than (to keep) sports,” Watsonville High student and two-sport athlete Amber Umiamaka said outside the meeting. “You can only get so far in sports. Education will get you a lot further than sports can.”

She and classmate Adam Lint were among the dozens of students present at the meeting. About 150 people crammed into — and in many cases spilled out of —the boardroom and into the hall, listening to the proceedings over speakers installed throughout the building.

Trustee Kim Turley, a former Watsonville High girls basketball coach, sounded deflated speaking about the budget mess.

“It’s almost speechless, in terms of devastation,” she said.

Local high schools have already spent the early parts of this school year in scramble mode, scratching and clawing to fundraise back the money that had already been slashed from the original 2008-09 budget. It was unclear as of press time Wednesday exactly what an 80 percent reduction in funding would do to high school sports. The elimination of many freshman and junior varsity teams would appear likely, along with the scaling-back of many sports that are relatively expensive and bring no revenue from gate sales back to the schools, like golf.

As of now, the dramatic cuts to school sports appear to be unique to the PVUSD. The neighboring North Monterey County Unified School District, which includes only one high school, has not announced teacher layoffs or any cuts to sports yet, North Monterey County High athletic director Roger O’Sullivan said, before adding that he couldn’t be sure whether there would be cuts in the future.

“We haven’t heard anything specifically, but of course there’s severe cuts around the corner, so we’re always fearful of that,” O’Sullivan said.

North Monterey County High has already taken many steps to reduce its athletics costs. For one, the school dropped its freshman girls basketball team, and has canceled yearly trips for the cross-country and track and field teams to various out-of-area tournaments. The school has also instituted several “pay-to-play” requirements that help the school offset athletics costs. For instance, every student-athlete is required to buy a $50 Associated Student Body card in order to compete on a sports team. Players must also play an extra $45 per sport for a “transportation fee.”

The PVUSD schools have never instituted such fees, and have in the past squashed most mentions of the idea.



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(Published on Jan. 29, 2009)

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Photo by I.A. Stewart/Register-Pajaronian

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