Caldwell High School is considering requiring students to pay a fee in order to participate in sports for the upcoming academic year.
Caldwell High School Activities Director Jon Hallock said nothing is set yet, but will discuss the potential system at the next school board meeting Monday at the district office at 7 p.m. Hallock hopes to hear feedback from the community to help find solutions to their funding shortage.
Transportation is the biggest cost the school has to endure with its limited budget.
“All the coaches are coming together to figure out what we can do to help with stipends, fundraise stipends,” Hallock said. “Transportation is the big beef because that’s a big chunk of money. It’s figuring out how to get kids from A to B to play games.”
This move comes in the wake of the failed $4.1 million levy in the Caldwell School District last month, forcing drastic changes to be made to the district’s budget. In addition to staff layoffs, the district plans to close Lincoln Elementary this fall.
Hallock estimates the fee would be around $100 for students to participate in a sport. Currently, the school has an ASB fee of $35 for the school year, which the district is also considering raising to $50. The ASB fee is a payment made by students who participate in an extracurricular activity.
That fee would remain if a pay-to-play fee comes into effect.
It’s unclear if the $100 would be per sport or cover all sports a student-athlete participates in during the school year. Hallock did not respond to a follow-up question for this story.
Hallock said the pay-to-play fee wouldn’t cover all of their transportation costs, but is an option the district is looking at to raise funds.
“The question becomes, what is it that we’re prioritizing,” Hallock said. “We want to hear from the community what it is they would like us to prioritize. Now we’re in a situation and we’re going to have to figure it out together.”
Athletic teams usually have fundraisers regardless of any budget limitations, but with the situation Caldwell finds itself in, it’s asking for even more fundraising efforts from each team.
Cross country head coach Alexis Martinez has set up a GoFundMe to help raise money. Per the page, they have eclipsed their fundraising goal of raising $8,000.
“Now they’re being asked to fundraise for a plethora of things that I normally, as an athletic director, fundraise to provide for them,” Hallock said. “I’m having to use that money to pay for structural things to make sure things are in place.”
Elsewhere in the Treasure Valley, the West Ada School District does have a pay-to-play system in place, charging high school students $110 per sport and $90 for middle school students, according to a district spokesperson. The fee is paid for only two sports, so a student-athlete that participates in three sports only has to pay the fee twice. This excludes the Idaho Fine Arts Academy, Renaissance High School and academy schools at the middle and high school level in the district.
The Boise and Nampa school districts do not have a pay-to-play system in place.
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