High school sports struggle as states slash budgets

Norm Brown sold cookie dough. He sought donations for a 5K run fundraiser. He helped organize a football camp. Brown, the football coach at Independence High in San Jose, Calif., poured his energy this spring into raising money to save the athletic program for the East Side Union school district's 11 high schools. So on June 25, when the district's board of trustees reversed an earlier decision to eliminate the district's $1.8 million athletic budget, Brown should have been celebrating. Instead, the night was bittersweet.

Because with the passage of the budget that saved sports, Brown lost his teaching job.

Brown's physical education job was one of 80 teaching positions axed as East Side Union struggled to cope with a deficit created by a multibillion-dollar shortfall in the state budget. The cuts eliminated the jobs of six other P.E. teachers, 13 English teachers, 12 math teachers, 11 science teachers, 10 social studies teachers and 28 others. California's state budget crisis has forced its districts to make difficult choices between auxiliary programs (athletics, music, the arts, etc.) and core programs, but as the recession's teeth sink deeper into state budgets across the country, more districts will face similar choices.
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Even in places where athletics budgets only need trimming, districts and state associations face serious issues. The subject of ballot initiatives, school board meetings, and even a lawsuit in federal court, athletic budgets are front and center like never before. In some districts, pay-for-play costs continue to rise as parents are being asked to foot more of the bill for high school sports. That includes the East Side Union district, where parents have been asked to make a $200 per athlete donation to help defray costs.

In some parts of the country, district leaders have tossed out cutting athletics as a political football to mobilize parents into approving tax increases -- even though they have no intention of making the cuts. That wasn't the case in California's East Side Union district. Brown and board member Eddie Garcia said the threat was real, and if the community hadn't acted, the program would have been vaporized.

Brown has made his choice. He plans to keep coaching even if Independence administrators fail in their efforts to get him back on the payroll. As of last week, they had guaranteed Brown one period a day. He has applied for unemployment benefits, but he hopes he doesn't need to collect. "I'm not giving up on the kids," Brown said. "I've decided to commit to [them]."

Brown and his seven brothers and sisters are products of the East Side Union district. Brown starred for Coach Ed Buller at Oak Grove High in the '80s. After graduation, he played linebacker at San Jose State. He knocked around the World League of American Football (NFL Europe's precursor) and the Arena Football League before coming back to California to teach and coach. Brown said his experience at Oak Grove inspired him to become a teacher, and he said he doesn't want future generations of East Side Union students to miss out on playing sports. "The extra helps the whole," said Brown, who said he receives a $4,000-a-year football coaching stipend that he splits with some assistants. "Sports play an integral part in the value of an education."

About a month after Brown's 76ers finished their season, East Side Union superintendent Bob Nunez proposed eliminating the district's athletic program to help balance the budget. Coaches, parents and athletes raised about $200,000 with the hope of funding athletics, but athletics remained in danger until April, when Garcia -- a former high school basketball coach who wasn't a board member when the cut was proposed ---held a town hall meeting to brainstorm solutions. Because the district receives most of its funding based on average daily attendance (about $6,400 a year per student), Garcia argued that the athletic budget was less than one percent of the total budget and that if even a small fraction of the district's estimated 6,300 high school athletes transferred out, the district would lose more than it had hoped to save. Garcia's fellow board members listened, and in late June the board approved a budget that would give athletics a one-time allotment of $800,000 from a court settlement. The rest of the money would come from the participant donations.

Garcia knows the settlement money offers a temporary fix. To fund sports next year, district voters probably will have to pass a parcel tax. Last year, voters in nearby Alameda, Calif., passed a similar tax after the local school district threatened to cut athletics, arts programs and Advanced Placement classes. Prior to the vote, students walked out en masse to protest the cuts. Garcia said he understands the consequences if the tax vote fails.

For starters, it would mean raising a lot of money. Last year, voters in Mount Vernon, N.Y., twice voted down the school district budget, forcing the district to adopt an austerity budget that included no funding for sports. Coaches, athletes, parents and community leaders rallied and raised almost $1 million. Donations included a $100,000 check from actor Denzel Washington, who grew up in Mount Vernon.