toledoblade.com --

In this three-day series, we examine the cause and effect of the Lake Local Board of Education's decision to eliminate extracurricular activities, and reaction to it. This action came after district voters failed five times to support levies that would cover increasing expenses.

Lake High School's last-ditch efforts to find funding to cover the cost for extracurricular activities including athletics for the 2005-06 school year has drawn plenty of interested observers outside of that community.

Southview athletic director Glen Gillespie is among those keeping a close tab on what's happening with the Flyers' athletic program. Lake isn't a member of the Northern Lakes League, but Gillespie feels the Flyers' pain. He recognizes the dilemma - shortage of funds to support extracurricular activities including athletics - is not confined to the Lake district.

"It's a national issue because the [government] dollars are becoming scarce," Gillespie said. "When you lose a team you don't want to end up losing a program. We're not adding programs. We're in a different world right now."

As the cost of fielding athletic teams continues to rise, government funding for public education has diminished through the years, according to Bob Kanaby, executive director of the National Federation of High Schools. The Lake school district is far from being alone.

In fact, Kanaby said school districts in at least 34 of the 50 states have pay-to-play programs in place to help offset funding shortfalls with regard to extracurricular activities. Pay-to-play is a fee charged to students participating in extracurricular activities such as athletics or marching band.

The two Sylvania high schools were among the first in the area to adopt a pay-to-play policy to help assist with funding for extracurricular activities. A Southview or Northview student must pay $125 to participate in athletics and $35 to join in activities such as band, yearbook, or choir. The athletic fee, which recently went up $25, was originally $100 when the school district implemented the policy nearly 10 years ago. That doesn't include the $800 price tag it costs for those participating in hockey at Northview.

Larry Jones, who retired this month as the Northview athletic director, said the money from pay-to-play helps to "defray the costs of coaching salaries and transportation."

The schools generate roughly $50,000 a year from pay-to-play. They would probably be dealing with an even higher fee if not for Sylvania school district residents voting in favor of a couple of tax levies in recent years.

"It's a fact that it's used to supplement what we have to pay for," Gillespie said of the pay-to-play fees. "The parents would actually love to see it go away, but when you have finite monies it's going toward academia and you have to supplement athletics.

"Unless something drastically changes in the state funding system, I don't see us ever dropping our fees."

The Lake school district has been unsuccessful five times in trying to get a levy passed that would provide funding to help support extracurricular activities. A pay-to-play policy that could cost a single household as little as $120 to as much as $600 per school year has also been discussed as part of the solution to the district's lack of funds designated for athletics. The policy could potentially bring in as much as $75,000 per school year based upon the number of participants in extracurricular activities.

However, going the way of pay-to-play isn't necessarily thought of as the most stable and sure-fire approach to keeping student athletes on the fields of play.

"Pay-to-play is the last resort before you begin to eliminate programs for budgetary reasons," Kanaby said.

Toledo Public Schools athletic director Ed Scrutchins makes it clear he'd be opposed to the concept of pay-to-play if TPS ever considered it.

The extracurricular activities budget for Toledo's 14 public high schools and junior highs is $2 million. That covers athletics, drama clubs, honor society, etc.

Each high school is given $100,000 to cover the salaries of six football coaches - the head coach and five assistants.

"Even if we're talking about $100, many of our kids don't even have enough money to pay for physicals," Scrutchins said.

The district's longtime athletic director said a pay-to-play policy wouldn't work in an urban school district that typically has a larger percentage of low-income households compared to suburban school districts.

"You'd be surprised to see how poor some people are," Scrutchins said. "I'm not in the business of dream-killing.

"There would even be some parents who would say, 'Even though I have it, I'm not going to pay it.' It would be adding to the demise of our inner city."

Scrutchins added: "Without extracurricular activities many of these kids wouldn't go to school. And if you cut out football, you're cutting out band, homecoming dances, etc."

Leonard Jackson, the Cleveland Municipal School District's longtime commissioner of athletics, was involved in the recent arrangements in which the Cleveland Browns and Indians donated $300,000 and $250,000, respectively, to ensure football, baseball, and softball seasons for the 2005-06 school year for the nine Cleveland public high schools. Jackson, who retired earlier this year before returning to work as interim commissioner of athletics this spring, also doesn't endorse pay-to-play as a solution for resolving funding problems within urban school districts that have a large percentage of low-income households.

"I'm totally opposed to pay-to-play," he said. "That's just not an option for me when you have a district that has 65 percent of the families living in poverty. I'd rather not have any option to play sports if we're going to go pay-to-play."

Kanaby, whose organization serves as a governing body for high school athletics nationwide, believes the significance athletics plays in the development of individuals is being lost as a result of the growing concerns and dialogue about trying to find more ways to fund athletics.

"Athletics are a rallying point for the communities," Kanaby said. "I see an even greater threat - the feeling on the part of school districts or communities that somehow [athletics] are looked at as outside of the educational process. To lose those kinds of things is unproductive for this country's future.

"The economics of our times make them make unfortunate decisions. If I were back in another time of my life wondering about whether I should move into a school district that was considering eliminating athletics, I'd have second thoughts about moving there."

Contact Donald Emmons at: demmons@theblade.com or 419-724-6302.

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