At a previous school board meeting, district Chief Operating Officer Michael Simonetta announced plans to do away with the indoor track and boys and girls varsity lacrosse as a way of handling a difficult budget year.
But at tonight’s meeting, Athletic Director Jim Pokrivsak announced he and Simonetta found ways to restructure aspects of the sports budget that should allow them to save the programs.
To entice people to buy tickets up front, the price of season tickets could go down, and tickets at the door would go up by $1, from $5 to $6. Pokrivsak said he sells about 1,600 season football tickets a year, and that number could be boosted.
But any ticket price raises must come before the school board as a separate item.
The same is true of one of his other suggestions: allowing advertising at Cottingham Stadium.
“We have to create a policy and find a way to bring businesses in here that can advertise,” Pokrivsak said. Between ticket restructuring and advertising, the district could raise an additional $17,000 in revenue, Pokrivsak said.
Currently, baseball players with the district buy their own glove, bat and cleats, as do lacrosse players.
By asking the same of wrestlers, so that they’d have to buy their own headgear, and a handful of other teams, the school district could save approximately $5,000, Pokrivsak said.
Limiting staff and not allowing volunteers or scorebook keepers, who get paid a stipend for travel, on trips could save about $2,000, and restructuring athletic event management, including reducing custodial and security staff, as well as ticket sellers and ushers, could save another $10,000, Pokrivsak said.
Many of the issues are savings that could have been addressed in previous years, according to board member Kerri Leonard-Ellison.
“This should have been talked about before we were talking about cutting lacrosse and winter track,” she said.
The board and the athletic department will continue looking at additional ways of saving money, Leonard-Ellison said.
