BHS sports take big budget cuts

When the Bigfork School Board was faced with the task of balancing the budget for next year one of the main areas they cut from was the athletics and activities fund at the high school, which was reduced by $25,720.

Two sports were eliminated from the high school's budget — golf and cross country — and it was decided that the school will no longer pay for meals for the athletes during post-season tournaments. Cutting the funding to the two sports will save the school about $12,000 and doing away with the school-funded meals will save about $15,000.

The golf and cross-country teams are still eligible to be a part of the school's athletics program, but they will have to come up with their own funding. A dollar amount has not yet been determined, but it will likely be upwards of $6,000 each with cross-country being on the higher end of that figure and golf being lower.

"I know people would like to know exactly how much each sport costs, but it's not easy to portray because of the variables," said Eda Taylor, district business manager.

Those variables include scheduling, whether or not a team makes it to divisionals and state, and the number of participants. Also, some expenses are divided into certain sports' cost code when they are tracked at the district office so there are some uncertainties about how much exactly is spent on bus drivers, fuel and supplies that range from balls to first aid kits. Another reason that it is hard for Taylor to quickly put a price tag on the sports is that the Booster Club pays for some of the sports' needs with the money it raises and that is not included in the budget. This year the club raised $30,000, which went to help a majority of the sports in different ways.

Although fundraising is usually a fairly easy task in Bigfork, it puts an added burden on coaches, who already have a lot on their plate.

"I don't have the time to do the fundraising, coach and teach," said Sue Loeffler, head cross-country coach.

At last Wednesday's board meeting Loeffler pleaded with the board to keep the sport, and offered to forfeit her $2,376 coaching salary.

"I could care less if I get paid," Loeffler said at the meeting. "You can cut my salary out of the program. I want to keep the program."

The decision to cut these particular sports' funding was based on the number of participants in relation to the cost of the sports — a point that didn't sit well with Loeffler or head golf coach Steve Hullett.

"It's a life sport and they're picking on golf because we're down to 11 kids this year," Hullett said. "It's been around longer than most of the other sports and it doesn't cost very much to run our program."

Loeffler agreed and pointed to what cross country has done for the school.

"Cross country put Bigfork on the map, especially with how well our girls have done the past several years," Loeffler said. "I know our numbers are down, but in the next few years it is going to change drastically especially with the number of girls we have coming up and then it switches and there's more boys than girls."

Cross country, as well as soccer, was previously a pay-to-play sport that was funded by the community until the fall of 2003, when funds were freed up after the elimination of the wrestling and softball programs

Both Loeffler and Hullett said that they would like to see the board try to trim money from the other sports, especially in the form of eliminating assistant coaches.

"If they look, they can find places to cut within the sports rather than cutting whole sports," Hullett said. "When I was coaching football, I only had four assistants and now they have six assistants and our numbers were much higher than they are now. You don't need all those coaches when you have less kids."

Loeffler made a similar observation at the meeting and later said that she was making a list of ideas to cut funding elsewhere to take to the high school administration.

"I think that there are other things that can be done," Loeffler said. "I'm not done fighting this."

Superintendent Russ Kinzer said that decisions about how many assistant coaches each sport is granted is determined by the number of students in the sport and what the sport is in regards for the safety concerns. For example, track needs more coaches per participant because the athletes are spread out across the field during practices and meets and are harder to supervise.

"Activities programs in schools have a lot to offer schools and the board would like to have them for the community," Kinzer said. "However, activities aren't as important as academics. We are facing the same budgeting and economic problems as individuals around the country so we have to do just like them — we have to prioritize what is most important to achieving our primary responsibility of educating children."

The idea of raising the price of the current activity fee from $15 was also suggested at the board meeting, but BHS principal Matt Jensen pointed out that several students already struggle to pay it. The fee was established four years ago when the team bus was purchased and funding was needed to maintain the vehicle.

With the budget still open to changes until August, Kinzer said that these two sports won't necessarily be the only pay-to-play sports at the school. He also added that Bigfork is not alone in having pay-to-play sports as it is becoming a necessity for schools across the state and the country as they face hard economic times.

"I know it hurts people when they want their child to participate in a program that we are recommending for reduction," Kinzer said. "It hurts us too, but we are required by the government to balance our budget."

Currently Bigfork offers more sports and activities per enrollment capita than any other school in the Valley or in District 7B according to a comparison done by the school using information gathered from the Montana High School Association 2009-10 School Directory and the Office of Public Instruction. Bigfork High School had an enrollment of 288 in November and has been offering 20 sports and activities, including speech, drama, debate, band, cheerleading and choir. Eureka had a November enrollment of 339 and offered just 17 sports and activities. The next largest District 7B school, Thompson Falls, had 199 students and funded 15 sports and activities. In comparison, Bigfork's neighboring school to the north, Columbia Falls, had double the November enrollment of Bigfork with 782 students yet offers the same number of activities as Bigfork. Whitefish had 511 students and offers 22 sports and activities.

"I think our activities programs are over extended," Kinzer said. "They are all very valuable, but you can't offer everything. You can't have it infringe on your ability to teach the students what they need to be learning in the classroom. Activities programs are meant to enrich your school, not be the driving force of it."

Although there is some chance that the deductions will be able to be taken from other places, Kinzer said that the decision to eliminate funding for the golf and cross-country programs is likely a final one as the board has put a lot of thought into the various scenarios.

"They want what's best for children that's why they're on the school board," Kinzer said. "These are very tough decisions for them to make. The current school board has a better working conceptual knowledge of school programs and budgeting than any board I've ever worked on. They have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours on educating themselves on the operational needs of the school. The result of that is the budget they presented Wednesday. It may not look like it to someone whose program is being eliminated, but the impact could have been much worse."

At Bigfork Middle School, $6,299 was cut from the athletics and activities budget. The largest cut came with the removal of the speech, debate and drama team. Currently Bigfork is the only middle school in the area that has a team, so the school didn't compete with any other schools anyway.

The middle school also eliminated one football coach position and one track coaching position and made the student body advisor job a volunteer position, in addition to eliminating the need for the two speech and debate coaches.