CENTRALIA — With the current school levy expiring December 2020, the Centralia School District is planning for worst-case-scenario-mode for its athletics and activities programs this upcoming school year.
If the new levy, which is up for vote on August 4, fails, the school district is planning to run only varsity high school sports during the 2020-21 school year.
The failed levy back in February already forced the school district to lay off 90 employees in May to counter a nearly $12 million budget shortfall. Now the Associated Student Body is helping cover overhead costs for athletics that the levy normally covers, which includes transportation, event workers’ pay and coaches’ salaries. It does not include funding for JV, C-squad and middle schools teams. Those programs will likely not be offered this school year, or in the future, if the August levy fails.
“They would be non-existent if we started tomorrow because we don’t have the funds to run those programs,” Chamberlain said.
All coaches in the school district have volunteered to work for free this upcoming year to help offset the costs. Should the levy fail, 90 percent of the varsity transportation to games would be through vans rather than the traditional buses, which is a $20,000 savings. That would leave no room for JV and C-squad teams to travel with the varsity to games of their own.
The only feasible way that JV and C-squad teams would be able to compete across all sports this year would be if the August levy passes. Though the district is working out-of-the-box ideas for how those teams could compete in a limited capacity, nothing concrete has been decided.
The current levy collects through December 2020, which is part of a fiscal year cycle, not an academic year. So the August levy, if passed, would start collecting in January 2021.
“If the levy was to pass, that would change our funding model,” Chamberlain said. “And those are the things we’re working out right now. We’ve made no decision, so far. There’s a lot of information to gather, and I know we need to get moving on that because we want our voters to know, but we’re not there yet.”
Even if the levy does pass, the district still wouldn’t be operating at 100 percent that was this past school year and there are likely still a lot of cuts to be made.
It’s important to note that this current worst-case-scenario, varsity-only sports plan for the 2020-21 year is a temporary, one-year solution. If the levy fails, the school district will not be able to offer sports in any capacity for the 2021-22 school year.
“We can’t sustain the way we’re going to fund (athletics) this upcoming school year if it fails,’ Chamberlain said. “We won’t have those ASB dollars the following year because we’ll drain our reserve athletic account. Also, I don’t think our coaches could commit to another year of volunteering.”
What will the current plan look like for the Centralia football team? The Tigers didn’t have a JV team last season, only a varsity and a C-team made up of freshman and sophomore because the program was so young. Now, fourth-year head coach Jeremy Thibault is coming up with solutions for his underclassmen, working to schedule home games for them to play against either JV and/or local Class 2B opponents.
“I think our A.D. (Scott Chamberlain) is really good at his job and is going to find ways to get kids playing,” Thibault said.
Thibault said volunteering to coach for free this upcoming season was an easy decision for him and his staff. It’s not easy working for no pay, but the compensation he and his staff will get comes with their players graduating and becoming productive members of society. Every football player except one the past three years has graduated, Thibault said, and the coaching staff has played a big part in that.
“We’re on kids all the time,” Thibault said. “We’re looking on Skyward and at their grades. We’ve built and forged these relationships where I can call a kid out for not getting the grades he needs to get. Without us, I think there’s not going to be that support and people looking out for them.”
Right now, he’s hoping to educate the public about the upcoming levy so the school district isn’t forced to use its worst-case scenario.
Unfortunately, it’s coming up for vote during a global pandemic and a historic economic crisis. Thibault understands people are broke or on unemployment or working reduced hours and many aren’t able to afford an increase in property taxes to fund the levy. He wants to stress that the levy is a continuation of the current levy, not an add-on.
“There’s a big deficit because people voted no,” Thibault said. “So now they have to trim money. It’s not like they’re missing that money. I think that’s a huge misconception that people think the school misallocated $12 million.”
Thibault says it’s disheartening to see people advocate and spend money to push the no vote, including several people whose kids Thibault has coached on the football team.
“I don’t think they quite understand they’re helping take those opportunities away,” Thibault said. “The only people who are going to suffer are the kids. It would be a scary sight to not have sports in Centralia.”
