Donations -- not taxes -- to fund football at Groton-Dunstable HS

February 28, 2008 09:09 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Matt Gunderson, Globe Correspondent

The Groton-Dunstable Regional School Committee has approved a new football program at the high school which will be largely funded through donations.

The committee made the decision close to midnight Wednesday before a crowd of about 30 parents and students. The new Groton-Dunstable Football Club will allow athletes to compete locally, instead of the current practice, which sends them to the Ayer public schools, where they can play football.

“I think it’s going to be an enormous boon for the spirit of this school,” said Principal Shelley Marcus Cohen.

The shift to a donation-funded team signifies the growing financial pressure on public schools as local officials wrestle with lackluster state aid and rising education costs. Paul Wetzel, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, said the step taken by Groton-Dunstable is becoming increasingly common.

Two committee members, Peter Carson and Paul Funch, voted against the donation program because of concerns about the program’s finances, which, they said, lacked specifics. But other committee members said it was hard to say no because they were so impressed with the level of dedication by advocates who had been pushing vigorously for the program.

School officials had hoped to budget money for a football program last spring, but the town rejected a $1.2 million tax increase. The new football program will be privately funded for the next three years, after which the School Committee will examine whether to keep it running with local taxes.

Funch said the new donation-driven sport was an unusual step for the district and expressed concern that parents making substantial donations to the program might receive special treatment for their children. Member Forrest Buzan countered that allegations of special treatment and insider politics is not unusual, even for tax-funded sports programs.

“There’s always someone who feels slighted and that there are backroom deals going on,” Buzan said.

The days are over in many high schools when local booster clubs simply raised money for concession stands, end of the season banquets, or other peripheral spending requests, said Wetzel from the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. In many high schools, these clubs are increasingly taking a central financial role in collecting money to establish new athletic programs or to keep such sports in business in the lean fiscal times, he said.

Virtually all high schools, except those in the major cities, have instituted athletic fees to cope with the budgetary woes, added Wetzel.

“There’s very few schools that can afford a brand new team in the current fiscal environment,” he said.

At Groton-Dunstable Regional High School, football proponents are going to face an uphill battle. In their first year, they will need to raise roughly $65,000 to get the team up and running, said athletic director Dan Twomey. The annual expenses for the program are expected to decline to almost half that cost – about $35,000 – by the fourth year, he said.

Twomey said the high school may consider raising athletic fees in order to fund the football program if all the donations are not in place by next fall. So far, the support for the football team among parents and current athletes has been overwhelming.

“I strongly believe it’s the right thing to do for this community,” Twomey said.