SALEM — After the MSAD #58 school board voted to cut $12,800 from the elementary sports line in next year’s budget, a committee formed to address the issue. Directors Ellen James, Kim Jordan and directorelect Sara Strunk met with athletic director Jeff Pillsbury to brainstorm and determine where elementary sports were heading.

“We wanted to make sure that people understood that specifically it (the vote) was not intended to cut coaches,” director Ellen James explained on May 17 at a school board meeting.

“We talked about the possibilities of keeping the program exactly like it is and tried to figure out how we were going to raise money,” James explained.

She said the committee looked at specific things like eliminating elementary junior varsity basketball, playing intramural sports or even having fewer competitions per year.

“We decided that we would try to raise money to keep the program exactly like it is.”

Some of the discussions for raising money included a small $10 pay-toplay fee for participants, approaching some large businesses for contributions and empowering each school community to raise money as well, James explained. She also said they’d try to find some volunteer coaches.

It was revealed that evening that the school union felt that it would be best if coaches were paid. However, it was also noted that after he or she signs a contract and is paid their stipend, a coach can turn around and donate any or all earnings back to the sports program. This donation is entirely up to the individual coaches and is not a union recommendation or suggestion.

Superintendent Quenten Clark said they currently have $44,935 budgeted for this year for elementary sports. The school board cut $1,700 from the uniform line and $12,810 from the coaching line to reduce the elementary sports budget to $30,425.

Strong resident Lisa Brackley was present to show a list of 278 petition signatures that were gathered from parents who were willing to pay to keep elementary sports programs running. “We don’t want to pay because we see money being spent in other places that some of us don’t feel needs to be spent,” Brackley said. “We want sports to stay the way they are in junior high. They need competitive sports,” she added. This was followed by an applause from the audience.

Mike Pond noted that it was recently determined that a teacher who was high on the pay scale may have been hired at another district. If this teacher is replaced, Pond suggested, there would be a savings. He suggested the money saved could be used to restore the sports program with district funding.

Director Sarah Woods was opposed to this. “We cut money from all departments, we cut books from the library, we cut supplies from the school,” Woods said. She said if there’s a savings down the road, it should go toward books and supplies for teachers, which she said were more important.

Committee member Kim Jordan agreed to go back to the committee plan. “We left the meeting excited about this plan,” Jordan said. “We’re not talking about a whole lot of money.”

Jordan explained that it represents only $3,000 or $3,500 for each community to start with. She said if they received a commitment from businesses for say $10,000 as an example, that’s just a small amount of money for each of the four elementary schools. Nearly 400 elementary students participated in sports this year which could raise another $4,000 in revenue with the pay-to-play plan.

It was also mentioned to do pre- or post-season round robins for sports where things like gate fees and concessions could raise money.

“I think this is a real opportunity to empower each of the four school communities to raise the money,” said Strunk, “I think a lot of positive things can come out of it as far as bringing the communities together with a common goal.”

A motion was made to support the plan to maintain sports as they are with donations, pay-to-play and fundraising. That motion was amended to say that if a local community fell short of its money raising goals, that particular program would discontinue for that year.

Meanwhile, the board also cut junior varsity sports from the high school budget. It was suggested to empower the Mt. Abram High School staff to enact a pay-to-play policy for each varsity athlete of $35 per participant per sports season.

Recent conversations have revealed that the numbers will not work as planned to allow high school junior varsity programs to run as they have in the past. Additional funding may be needed to maintain JV sports at MTA in the future.