Schools
D229 to Start Cutting Coaches and Club Advisors
The first cut is the deepest. Dist. 229 officials to start chipping away at student sports and activities to create surplus to offset looming deficits.
The Oak Lawn Community High School Dist. 229 school board gave its blessing to district administrators to start cutting coaches and extracurricular advisors in an effort to create a budget surplus at the end of the 2011-12 school year.
Such cuts are necessary because of looming budget deficits of up to $1.4 million over the next three years, district officials said at the board meeting on Feb. 16.
The proposal calls for eliminating the stipends that teachers earn for coaching sports and serving as advisors for such extracurricular activities as art club, French club and student council. Teachers’ stipends range from $3,100 to $8,900, based on experience.
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“The overarching objective was to find positions that could be eliminated and still maintain our current level of opportunity for students,” Superintendent Michael Riordan told school board members.
On the chopping block are 10 coaching positions and 12 extracurricular advisors that would create a budget surplus of $119,812, including:
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- 1 football coach (out of 11)
- 1 girls swimming/diving coach (out of 3)
- 1 golf coach (out of 2)
- 1 girls basketball coach (out of 5)
- 1 boys basketball coach (out of 5)
- 1 boys swimming/diving coach (out of 3)
- 1 wrestling coach (out of 4)
- 1 baseball coach (out of 5)
- 1 softball coach (out of 5)
Extracurricular advisory positions to be eliminated include:
- Art Club advisor
- 1 Drama Club advisor (out of 5)
- French Club advisor
- freshman class advisor
- NAHS advisor
- Photo Club advisor
- sophomore class advisor
- Spanish Club advisor
- 1 forensics advisor (out of 5)
- Key Club advisor
- 1 Spartanite (newspaper) advisor (out of 2)
- 1 student council advisor (out of 2)
District administrators also propose combining the art and photo clubs into a a new Visual Arts Club, and the French and Spanish clubs into a World Languages Club. An Underclassman Advisory Board would also be created to make up for the elimination of the freshman and sophomore class advisors.
“We’re not eliminating any program outright, and to the greatest degree possible we’re not eliminating any level of a program,” Riordan said. “If a current program has varsity, sophomore and freshmen, with the coaching reductions we’d still be able to maintain those levels for all the different sports.”
The only exception, Riordan added, may be in certain sports where there are freshman “A” and “B” teams, which generally occur in football, basketball and a few other sports. Riordan said he’s heard from other schools that already have eliminated their freshman “B” teams.
School administrators also are proposing implementing student participation fees in sports and extracurricular activities. Students would pay a fee of $75 to participate on a sports team, and $25 to participate in a club. Fees would be capped at $150 regardless of how many teams or clubs a student belonged to.
The school’s cost for fielding a student on an athletic team is $907, Riordan said.
The district superintendent asked for the board’s consensus on allowing administrators to start notifying coaches and advisors that their positions are being eliminated. Riordan also laid on the table a “Tier 2” plan that called for even more drastic cuts to student sports and activities in the future.
“We have to take seriously what the projections are saying and chip away at it,” board member Donald Biernacki said. “This plan is not impacting or reducing the number of teams we have and is certainly a benefit. Nobody wants to take away from students what they have but the fact of the matter is that we have to live within our means.”
Riordan said he also spoke to the teachers’ leadership about freezing stipend increases of 4 percent and 6 percent over the next two years at the current level, but he said union leaders would not buy it. The stipend freeze would have saved an additional $185,000.
“They wanted us to go back to our old plan of not eliminating any coaching or advisors’ positions,” Riordan told board members.
Last fall, the high school let go some of its event workers—teachers and administrative staff who could opt to earn additional money working sporting and club events. The school is currently in litigation with the school’s union leaders over the elimination of events workers that is soon to be settled by an arbitrator.
The school also “fired” its fall coaches, putting all of them on notice that some contracts may not be renewed next year. The board also mandated the school to raise $150,000 to offset the $1.4 million the district expends on its extracurricular activities for the current school year. Through fundraisers, the school has managed to raise $65,000.
“That’s revenue we haven’t experienced in the past,” Riordan said after the board meeting. “”We decided to avoid making these cuts last year. It may have helped us not make further cuts for next year.”
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