KINGWOOD — How the school levy impacts sports and fundraising by boosters was clarified at this week’s Preston County Board of Education meeting.
Representatives of the Preston High School Athletic Boosters asked the board how much money sports will receive from the school levy passed in February and how it will be distributed.
“Through the levy, there wasn’t a category to give money to sports,” Superintendent Steve Wotring said. However, he explained, each school receives an allocation that can be used for field trips, and schools may opt to spend part of their allocation to pay for buses to a game, for example.
Schools already have their allocation and have decided how to spend it, Wotring said. “It isn’t money just for sports. It’s money for a field trip of any kind. You might have an academic trip,” he said.
Boosters Vice President Karen Shrout also asked if the group is limited in the number of fundraisers it can have each year?
Wotring said a promise was made to voters when the levy was promoted to limit the number of school fundraisers. A county policy limiting the number of major fundraisers has been in effect for sometime, he noted.
“It just hasn’t been adhered to,” Wotring said.
Every proposed fundraiser has to be submitted to the county office for approval. Policy allows the high school, for example, to do three major fundraisers a year. A bake sale, for example, isn’t a major fundraiser.
Boosters are separate from the school and don’t fall under the limitations.
“However, I believe it is the board’s intention that you’re not going to have 15 boosters organizations out there all doing fundraisers at the same time, cause it’s the same kids.”
When boosters do fundraisers, they have to tell the central office what they are doing and how much is raised. That’s an attempt to avoid fraud and because the money is raised in the name of a school, Wotring said.
“I know how expensive equipment is. I expect nothing more than to see all kind of fundraisers, because we’re [sports] self-funding,” board member Pam Feathers said.
Wotring said it could be helpful to have the county treasurer meet with all organization treasurers to explain what is expected of fundraisers. And, Feathers suggested, schools should make it known how they determined their allocation would be spent and where it will go.
A bus for Birds Creek
Also at the meeting, Candy Bryson and Susie Sheets of Birds Creek Road again asked the board to have a bus run less than a mile down the road to pick up students who attend Kingwood schools. It is at least the third time the request has been made.
Board President Jack Keim reiterated his opinion that the board follow the current bus schedule for at least the first semester before making changes. Bus schedules were changed to minimize buses crossing routes. The county also redrew attendance lines this year for the first time in more than 40 years.
Sheets said a bus ran the route for years to pick up Kingwood Elementary, Central Preston and PHS students on Birds Creek.
Ultimately the board told Wotring to look at GPS data from the buses and make a recommendation on changes, if any. The computer program that uses the GPS data can be asked to “build” schedules based on the data of travel, passenger numbers and other information, Wotring said.
Board member Bob Ridenour said he didn’t disagree with the decision but thought the board might be overstepping its role, which is to set policy, not handle administrative details.
“We need to let the people that we have hired to do this do their jobs,” he said.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
