While the school board recently passed a preliminary budget that staves off cuts to educational programming, many in the sports community are left wondering how the district’s PAC-10 program is going to operate without an athletic director overseeing it.

As part of the district’s effort to reduce its remaining $6.5 million budget shortfall, administrators have proposed eliminating Athletic Director Madison Morton’s position from its payroll effective July 1, having his responsibilities taken on by the Boyertown Area Senior High School assistant principal.

During a phone interview with The Mercury Wednesday, Superintendent Dion E. Betts said administrators will be meeting in the coming days to review how Boyertown can retain jobs, including Morton’s, while curbing operating costs.

“We realize that we are in the worst budget season in the district’s history,” Betts said.

With salary and benefits, Betts said eliminating Morton’s position would save the district approximately $90,000.

Administrators do not want the planned position elimination to move forward and are working to create a “refined plan” regarding the budget proposal to present to the public and board members by the June 7 finance committee meeting, Betts said.

“My plan is to have a solution by that time,” he said.

Betts said he does not know of any districts in the tri-county area that operate without an athletic director, but added that the Great Valley, Daniel Boone Area and Wyomissing Area School districts are exploring shifting the responsibilities of their athletic directors to other administrators to fix their budget woes.

Calls seeking information from those three districts exploring that option went unreturned Wednesday afternoon.

Without an athletic director guiding Boyertown’s more than 1,200 PAC-10 athletes, Betts said it would make running the programs difficult.

“It would be certainly detrimental if those roles and responsibilities are not filled in some way,” he said. “We’re still collecting data and exploring all options.”

Administrators have expressed “concerns” about placing the athletic director’s responsibilities on the assistant principal, explaining that person has a number of duties during the day, including monitoring instruction, meeting with parents and teachers and more, and a “realignment” of their tasks would be needed, Betts said.

“We’re still working out all of those things,” he said.

Currently, the high school assistant principal position is vacant and administrators are exploring not hiring a person for that spot in order to maintain Morton’s job, he said.

Besides saving personnel, Betts said it would fit with Boyertown’s “effort” to streamline its operations.

“We taking this as an opportunity to become more efficient,” he said. “All options are on the table.”