Menino will seek gifts for school sports

The foundation is the centerpiece of a series of changes Menino crafted in response to a Globe series that showed the city has severely shortchanged Boston’s high school athletes in funding, equipment, facilities, coaching, and oversight. He said he has received a preliminary commitment from one Boston professional sports team to help launch the foundation and is optimistic others will join the effort.

The plan calls for the foundation to raise nearly $4 million over the next 18 months and provide substantial long-term funding.

“There clearly is a need for it,’’ Menino said in an interview Friday. “There is a purpose for it, and there is an enthusiasm for it. We’re going to make a difference.’’

The Globe’s made its findings about problems in Boston school athletics 16 years into Menino’s tenure as mayor, as he seeks another four-year term. He has long cast himself as a leader who considers providing vibrant youth sports programs a top priority, but in the interview he was unusually candid in assessing the system’s shortcomings under his administration.

“It’s too bad we didn’t get there quicker, but I’m working hard on it,’’ Menino said.

His plan includes creating a repository for colleges, pro sports teams, manufacturers, and nonprofits to donate equipment to high school teams. To attack the problem of widespread academic ineligibility, Menino said he is appealing to colleges and universities to enlist more students as tutors for Boston’s high school athletes.

He said he wants to expand opportunities for students to participate in sports, in part by fielding the city’s first high school lacrosse team and by increasing the number of golf teams. He said he will explore ways to hire better coaches, despite a contractual obligation that effectively limits the pool of candidates by favoring members of the Boston Teachers Union.

In addition, Menino said he has been working for several months on a plan for Northeastern University to make multimillion-dollar improvements to White Stadium in Franklin Park, the city’s premier high school sports venue, and also have Northeastern’s football team play its home games there. The city has already built six artificial turf fields for Boston high schools, with two more on the drawing board, first for Dorchester High School, then West Roxbury.

Menino declined to identify which professional sports team had committed to help launch the new nonprofit. The Globe reported yesterday that the Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics all expressed interest in helping if the city had a plan for improving school sports programs.

Menino’s opponents in the mayoral race described his plan as too little too late.

“Where has he been on this issue for the past 16 years?’’ said Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty. “Our school sports program is an embarrassment.’’

Flaherty said the city needs to provide greater funding for school athletics before it appeals for private aid. Last year, the School Department allocated just under $4 million, or less than a half-percent, of its $832 million budget to athletics, far below the state and national averages.

If he is elected, Flaherty said, he would immediately increase the athletics budget to 2 percent of the total, or more than $16 million, with an eye to raising the amount to 4 percent annually with additional support from a nonprofit Boston Public Schools Athletic Fund.

Councilor at Large Sam Yoon, also a mayoral candidate, blamed Menino for allowing the athletic system to languish.

“We have a city that has great ideas and incredible resources, and we have the mayoral leadership that doesn’t use them,’’ Yoon said. “Using his incredible popularity to take bold action and even risks to address chronic problems like the inequities in the athletic system - that’s what has been lacking.’’

Menino’s plan is the city’s latest attempt to address deficiencies in Boston school athletics. In 1993, Mayor Raymond L. Flynn said he would create the Boston Public School Sports and Fitness Corp. to provide private support for athletics in the public schools. He launched the initiative after a task force reported inadequacies strikingly like those detailed in last week’s Globe series. Two months later, Flynn resigned to become US ambassador to the Vatican, with Menino succeeding him.

“After I went to the Vatican, I couldn’t follow it all that closely,’’ Flynn said in a phone interview.

In 1997, Menino created the Boston Youth Sports Congress after a Northeastern study found that only about 35 percent of the city’s youths played sports regularly, about half the rate in nearby suburbs. (The figures have changed little since then, said Dan Lebowitz, executive director of Northeastern’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society.)

Mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea, a South End developer who helps run neighborhood sports programs, said Menino should have acted more aggressively years ago.

“This is indicative of the whole way the mayor runs the city,’’ McCrea said. “He’s completely reactive and not proactive about what goes on.’’

McCrea pointed out that Boston ranks among the top 10 percent of Massachusetts communities in spending per pupil in the public schools, yet allocates relatively little to athletics.

“It’s not the job of the Red Sox to fund the schools,’’ he said. “The politicians should make sure sports and arts are funded as part of what makes a civic society.’’

Menino said budget constraints make it necessary to seek creative solutions. Last week, the City Council approved a $2.4 billion budget that reduced overall spending for the first time in 15 years. “There’s not a lot of money to go around for student-athletes,’’ Menino said.

Most other communities in the state help fund their athletic programs by charging students fees to play. But with 75 percent of Boston’s student population classified as low-income, Menino said participation fees would be impractical.

He said he hoped the new foundation would inspire parents and community groups to organize booster clubs. While they might be unable to rival Latin’s alumni, who give more than $100,000 a year to the school’s sports programs, the groups could make a difference for many underfunded, ill-equipped teams in the city.

“There is no simple solution,’’ Menino said. “It’s a complex issue, but we know sports are important to the advancement of the Boston public schools.’’

Bob Hohler can be reached at hohler@globe.com.