by Breeanna Jent on 2013-10-31
Independent sports leagues in Colton and Grand Terrace are still discussing with the school district the terms of field usage fees the Colton Joint Unified School District (CJUSD) is looking to implement.
When the (CJUSD) in August approved a field usage fee, many community sports league leaders in both cities, who use the fields of CJUSD schools for practice and game purposes, were angry.
While the field use fees have not yet taken effect, proponents of the leagues said the proposed fees would devastate the leagues and run them out of business.
Christina Brodbeck, president of Grand Terrace Basketball and who is also on the board of the Grand Terrace Community Soccer Club (GTCSC), said the fees the CJUSD proposed were “astronomical.”
According to the approved fee schedule, the district will charge $25 an hour for leagues to use elementary school fields, $35 an hour to use middle school fields and $45 an hour for high school fields. Other costs are higher—it will cost leagues $125 an hour to use a high school football stadium without lights and $175 an hour with lights.
“For our basketball club, they want to charge us a $100 an hour fee to use the McIntosh and Ken Hubbs gyms [at Colton High School],” Brodbeck said. “That comes out to about $2,500 to $3,000 to run the league. Our operating budget in one year is far less than that. We could potentially lose our leagues.”
Brodbeck said that the burden to cover the costs of field usage fees would force the leagues to charge parents higher league fees, which she fears will discourage parents from signing their children up, or could cause parents to take their children to other leagues in nearby cities.
She says the dissolution of the leagues would be harmful to the cities.
“Sports are a big thing around here. When kids are participating in sports, they’re not roaming the streets and looking for things to do,” she said.
But the downturn of the economy in recent past years has put the district into a financial predicament, explained CJUSD spokeswoman Katie Orloff.
“It costs a lot of money to maintain the fields and keep them open. With the serious budget situation we are in, we can’t afford to pay the costs that go into opening up the fields at all times,” said Orloff.
In order to meet the budget, the school district has also tried to cut costs by shortening the school year by five days, increasing the walking distance requirements for kids to qualify to ride school buses, and have eliminated crossing guards, said Orloff.
“It’s a very important issue because having the fields open at all times does create significant wear and tear. When we don’t have staff around to take care of things, vandalism occurs. I’m certainly not pointing the finger at any of the sports groups, but the sad fact is that keeping the fields open allows for bad things to happen,” Orloff said.
“We’re willing to pay for our youth and for reasonable wear and tear,” Brodbeck said. “But we don’t want to be responsible for the sins of others. There are outside groups that come and tear up the fields.” Brodbeck also said that the leagues try to keep the facilities as clean as they can, with many leagues requiring coaches and athletes to participate in field cleanup throughout the season.
“We do all our own cleaning,” Brodbeck said.
Orloff claimed that field usage fees will not bring in any extra money to the district. “They only cover the costs to open the fields to community use. There is an education code that covers what we [the district] are allowed to charge for. This includes supplies, utilities, custodial services and staff members, and the salaries paid to these employees for being there. This is absolutely not a money maker. We are just trying to recover costs,” said Orloff.
Brodbeck said, “If the school board wants to recover costs, it’s going to put leagues in debt; they wouldn’t recover those funds because the leagues would just go out of business. We’re frustrated and worried.”
Currently, Orloff said, district superintendent Jerry Almendarez is meeting privately to continue fee discussions with the leagues on an individual basis. Anyone interested in participating in these meetings may call the superintendent’s office for more information on meeting dates and times by calling 909-580-6506, said Orloff.
[END]
Article published in the Sun:
Sept. 2
COLTON>> Many youth sports leagues won’t exist in the areas served by the Colton Joint Unified School District if planned fees to use school district facilities go into place, advocates of those leagues say.
The burden would mean costs to participate in the Grand Terrace Community Soccer Club would need to increase by about $35 per family, calculates its vice president, Robert Sanchez, and he says too many of the league’s 600 participants wouldn’t be able to afford that.
“(District officials) told us they were considering it a while back, and we all raised our hands and said we cannot afford these rates,” he said. “If you charge these rates, we will close our doors.”
The Colton Joint Unified School District approved a fee schedule Aug. 1 that includes a charge of $35 an hour to use the middle school fields as the soccer league does, district records show. Based on the standard practice and game schedule, Sanchez says that will be about $12,000 per season.
Other fields are more expensive-$17t to use the high school football stadium with the lights on, for example.
“The money they think they’re going to get, they won’t if no one can use the fields,” Sanchez says.
But that’s what the district is paying - through repairing wear and tear, cleaning up the inevitable vandalism and other associated costs - when teams use those fields, said district spokeswoman Katie Orloff.
“The fact is that we’re one of the few districts around that does not charge for facility use,” Orloff said, “and it costs a significant amount of money to maintain our facilities. Any dollar we spend doing that is a dollar we take from education.”
The district has already eliminated some nursing positions, adult education, summer school and five days of the school year - and still its budget wasn’t conservative enough to be accepted by the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ Office, according to Orloff. Officials will meet with the county office after making more reductions, she said.
Yet the field fees are still calculated to exactly match the money the district spends on upkeep, with no revenue going from it to other programs.
“This is absolutely not a money-maker for us,” Orloff said. “This is just a way to recoup costs that at this time are coming out of education programs, which for all the reasons I just said and many more we can’t afford to do anymore.”
The field fees were discussed last year and still aren’t scheduled to go into effect until February. Before then, advocates plan to applea the school board at Thursday’s board meeting as well as at a public meeting on the subject scheduled Tuesday for 3 p.m. at Joe Baca Middle School, 1640 S. Lylac Ave., Bloomington, according to emails between leaders of various leagues.