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School officials nix plan for middle school athletics
By Stephanie Salmons
Jackson County School Board members voted 4-1 against joining the Blue Ridge Athletic Conference, which would have led to the formation of countywide middle school athletic teams.
The vote came during the board’s Nov. 25 meeting.
Prior to their regular session, board members discussed the issue and the results of town hall style meetings held to garner public input with regard to middle school teams.
Board member Ali Laird-Large launched the discussion, saying that the cost is a major limiting factor.
“Because I like to cut to the chase, I think at this point in time, because we’re in a depression pretty much or going toward there and we may be losing teaching positions as well as having to send money back to the state, that we can’t really go into this kind of venture at this time,” Laird-Large said. “I think we can debate the issue forever and ever, but I think the bottom line is that we just don’t have the money to do it.”
Board member Thurza McNair agreed with Laird-Large, saying that with the school system having to return money to the state this is not the time to join a middle school conference.
“In looking at the amount of the reversion (money that must go back to the state) and knowing that is not necessarily all that we will have to send back, I don’t want us to go with this and end up having to cut teaching positions,” McNair said. “There will be another opportunity and hopefully economic times will have improved; I would feel remiss if I did this knowing that we have to send $148,000 back to the state out of our budget.”
According to Chairman Ken Henke, the school district may again have the opportunity to participate in the conference next year or the year after.
“Let’s say I talked to someone involved in Haywood County,” Henke said, after board member Mark Brooks said that he hadn’t heard that.
According to Brooks, who later cast the opposing vote, not moving forward with the conference at this time “will be one of the biggest mistakes that we will have made since I’ve been (on the school board).“
“I don’t know how you can say it’s going to be the worst thing,” Laird-Large said. “I think it would almost be unethical for us to spend money on athletics at this point when we might be losing teachers, because we are basically in the teaching profession. I understand that athletics are very important. They were extremely important for my kids, and they didn’t have a middle school at that point. I don’t think that we’re going to be hurting children by doing this, which is my main objective in this whole thing.”
Macon County had the same offer and didn’t have this kind of debate about it, Brooks said.
Macon County has a middle school, Laird-Large said.
“They’re set up totally different than we are,” she said. “We don’t even know where we would have these practices,” Laird-Large said.
Officials, parents and students need to know more information before the decision is made to participate in such a program, she said.
“The questions that people asked me during those sessions, I didn’t even have answers for them,” she said.
It is also likely that the program would cost more than anticipated, she said.
According to a rough estimate previously provided by Assistant Superintendent Steve Jones, the potential cost for a middle school athletic program would be around $56,856.
However, costs could fluctuate based on inventory already available, Jones said. For example, if the middle school teams could use equipment or old uniforms already purchased, the cost would be lower, Jones previously said.
Parents had said that some equipment was “terrible,” Laird-Large said.
“We can’t put kids out there with terrible equipment, because that means that this budget here isn’t even half of what it would need to be,” she said.
“But talking about money, at the last meeting we let county commissioners take money we thought was covered and now $600,000 is gone,” Brooks said, referring to the $600,000 in ADM funds and money commissioners requested to pay for renovating Smoky Mountain High School’s “D” Building.
The economic crisis is hitting everyone, even the county, Laird-Large said.
Henke said that school system programs that are already established will be hurting.
“The question I come down to is right here: where is this money going to come from?” Henke said, adding that the fund balance is getting “dangerously low,” which means school officials can’t dip into those funds and the outside source for funding is the county.
“If you go and you talk to them, they’re going to tell you that they have reached the limits in terms of their loans and what they can do for us,” he said. A middle school athletic program is possibly something that can be looked at in the next year’s budget, Henke said.
According to McNair, board members had an idea that money would have to be returned to the state but did not have a fixed amount.
“The fact that we will have to send money back, and the fact that we have the amount now makes everything more concrete in terms of making decisions,” she said. “I think this board has really tried to support athletics in many ways. It’s not that we don’t value that, but education, the staff to provide education and those things have to come first because that’s what our business is, educating children.”
Brooks agreed.
“You’re right. I don’t know where $50,000 or $100,000 comes from either, but this is a really good opportunity.”
Board member Tracie Rice suggested taking “baby steps” to be more prepared should the idea present itself in the future.
“What we heard was ‘yes, this is a great opportunity, but don’t take away anything that we already have,’ and I just don’t think that we have the time or even the knowledge of everything that is involved or will be involved to be able to say we can offer this and not take anything away.
Superintendent Sue Nations told The Herald Nov. 25 that the school system will have to return $148,172 to the state.
Due to state corporate income tax shortfalls, local school districts will have to return around $39 per student, Nations said.
Nations said she planned to meet with school system finance officer Gwen Edwards this week to determine where budget cuts can be made to cover the funds that must be returned.
Officials were notified Nov. 21, of the exact amount to be returned to the state, Nations said.
“It’s going to be a lean year for us in terms of the economic picture, and I think North Carolina is like the rest of the nation,” she said.
To assess public opinion with regard to joining a middle school athletic conference, local elementary schools surveyed students and parents last month. Although to the survey, results favor joining the conference while keeping school teams, the surveys were not discussed in either meeting.
District-wide, 58.85 percent of students and 55.94 percent of parents favored joining the conference with the vast majority of those wanting to keep the current school teams as well.
Some 48 percent of students favored joining the conference while keeping the school teams as they stand, while nearly the same percentage – 46.56 percent – of parents surveyed said the same thing.
On the other hand, 41.15 percent of parents with students in the sixth through eighth grades, and 44.06 percent of students in those same grades favored declining the invitation to join the conference.
With regard to a third option, joining the conference and forming one district team for each sport and possibly developing intramural programs at each school, 10.84 percent of students surveyed were in favor while only 9.38 percent of parents voted to go in that direction.
Some 60 percent of parents of students at Smoky Mountain High School feeder schools – Scotts Creek, Cullowhee Valley, Fairview and Smokey Mountain Elementary – that had an opinion on the issue favored joining the conference. Nearly 50 percent of parents favored joining the conference and keeping the current school teams while 10.33 percent of the parents favored joining the conference and disbanding school teams. Some 40.59 percent of parents favored declining the invitation to the conference.
More students in the feeder schools were surveyed than parents and 49.06 percent of those who had an opinion wished to accept the invitation and continue on with the school teams as they are currently configured while 8.75 percent of the students surveyed said they felt that the schools should accept the conference invitation and form only one district team. On the other hand, 39.62 percent of students at the SMHS feeder schools voted to decline the invitation.
A majority of the elementary feeder schools favored joining the conference. Cullowhee Valley students were 70.3 percent in favor of that decision, Fairview was 67.2 percent in favor and SMES students were 71.2 percent in favor.
On the opposite side, Scotts Creek Elementary school went the other way and voted to decline the invitation. More than 69 percent of the students that were surveyed and had an opinion said they opposed accepting the invitation and wanted to leave the middle grades athletic program as is.
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