Emotions Run High Over Sports at Heated BOE Meeting

Emotions ran high at the Brick Board of Education meeting Wednesday night as parents and one board member said a middle school sports program was unfair to families. The board, during a meeting that spanned nearly five hours, eventually passed the plan, however.

Most middle school sports programs – including all of the spring sports programs, which include baseball, softball and track and field – were eliminated from the school budget this year due to budget constraints. But board members, along with school officials, came up with a plan that would charge parents up to $376 per student to participate in spring sports.

Parents who addressed the board at Wednesday evening’s meeting said the fees were simply too high.

Jenny Manzo, a mother of three middle school aged children, wondered how she could save enough money to pay for sports before the Feb. 22 due date for payment.

“I would have to pay a thousand dollars and change within two weeks if all three of them wanted to participate,” said Manzo. “I have to come up with that kind of money immediately.”

Students would be charged $376 for baseball and softball and $346 for track and field. The district set a 22 player minimum for baseball and softball, and a 30 player minimum for track. Tryouts will be held if the number of interested students eclipses the minimum roster numbers.

Parents lined up to ask board members whether it was fair if a child whose parents paid the participation fee didn’t get to play in every game. Other parents criticized the district for waiving the fees for students who receive free or reduced lunch.

“What happens in the case where I can’t afford it, and I’m not free and reduced?” asked Jean Richardson. “How does that really seem fair to all of the students in the district?”

“I can’t say that it’s fair or not fair,” answered schools superintendent Walter Hrycenko. “It’s the law.”

Hrycenko said state law bars the district from charging participation fees of any kind to students whose family incomes qualify them for free or reduced lunch prices. The district estimated how many students would qualify for fee waivers and rolled that cost into the fees the remaining students would be charged, Hrycenko said.

Board member Vicky Leone, who helped design the pay to play program, said fundraising efforts could help defray the cost of the program, and if those efforts were successful in the short term, parents could eventually be refunded a portion of the fee later this school year.

“There is a way, if we all work together, that we can reimburse these parents back,” said Leone. “The problem is that we have to come up with the money up front.”

John Talty, another board member, represented the sole vote against the plan when it eventually came up for a vote. Talty said the pay to play program was not fair to struggling families and the fees were too high. He excoriated fellow board members for refusing to enter an agreement with the township council last year that he said would have saved middle school sports programs.

“They offered you an option,” Talty said, referring to negotiations with the township council following the defeat of the 2010-11 school budget at the polls last April. The council decided to trim the budget by $1 million, but said it would only cut $700,000 if the district promised to retain middle school sports programs. The school board did not accept the offer.

“Nobody wants to be given those ultimatums, and that’s what it was,” said school board president Kim Terebush, referring to the deal proposed by the council.

“Quite frankly, I begged them not to cut the money from us,” said Terebush. “I begged for some kind of sympathy.”

Responding to Terebush’s comments by phone after the meeting, Council President Brian DeLuca told Brick Patch: “There was no begging going on, I can tell you that much.”

“There was such a public outcry about sports, we asked whether we could make a cut of $700,000 instead of $1 million,” recalled DeLuca. “They said no, they didn’t want it.”

The back-and-forth between Talty and Terebush, as well as parents in the audience and board members, occasionally got heated, with audience members occasionally cheering Talty’s positions and shouting demands that the fees be eliminated.

Board member Warren Wolf, toward the end of the discussion, set aside the angry tone of the meeting and said the bluster wasn’t accomplishing much.

“We’re not answering the problem,” Wolf said. “All we’re doing is reacting to it.”