Rock Hill school board agrees to extra money for sports, school supplies

The Rock Hill school board agreed to dole out an extra $75,000 for high school sports in a quest for equity and $86,000 for library books or other teaching materials at schools districtwide.

The board approved a recommendation Monday by Superintendent Kelly Pew to increase athletic funding at South Pointe High School by $35,000 and at Rock Hill and Northwestern high schools by $20,000 each, for a total of $75,000. South Pointe received more money in an effort to create equity between the three schools.

The board divided 4-3 in a separate vote to give out $86,710 to schools across the district for instructional supplies. That cost would amount to $5 per student.

Pew said the teaching supply money that will go to each school could be used for any type of instructional item.

Board member Walter Brown opposed both moves, saying none of the high school athletic budgets or schools are operating in the red. “This was not a need,” Brown said.

Pew’s recommendation for high school athletics came out of the report of an auditor hired last fall to look at financial equity issues across the three high schools. A district equity committee met for several months on that issue.

The auditors’ analysis showed base athletic costs across the three schools were about the same for Northwestern and Rock Hill, but more costly for South Pointe.

Greenville-based Greene Finney & Horton said South Pointe, a Class 3A school, has to travel farther to play region opponents and the revenue at its home games is less.

The auditor recommended giving South Pointe a $15,000 “equity” payment to cover the difference in costs. It also recommended an additional $20,000 for each high school to put them on par with other athletic programs in the state.

Mychal Frost, the district’s public information officer, said the administraton wanted to add money for instructional supplies to “ensure that we are not putting only a priority on athletics. We wanted to emphasize the importance of academics as well.”

Money for athletics and instructional supplies had been cut in the past.

In 2008, the school district eliminated a $35,000 athletic payment to each high school to balance the budget, and officials said they recently restored $20,000 of that.

Board chairman Jim Vining said instructional supply money was cut during the recession, too. He said the district hasn’t increased funding at the rate of inflation.

“It kind of made sense,” Vining said, “that if athletics needed it, instruction needed it as well.”

High school principals have said the money would help their programs have a better bottom line.

Both amounts were to come from the district’s fund balance, a financial reserve account.

Brown was the only board member to vote against the athletic allocation, but he was joined by members Helena Miller and Terry Hutchinson in a 4-3 vote to oppose more money for instructional supplies.

Miller supported the money for athletics, saying she has “a lot of faith in the equity committee and its work.” But she said adding money for instructional supplies was “going down a slippery slope.”

Miller said every school has instructional needs, but she objected to taking more money from the fund balance. Brown agreed, saying there was no need to tap that account.

Brown said he could “go along with” paying the cost of high school athletic officials up to a cap of $20,000 for each school instead of doing the equity payment.

“We are four months from having a budget approved,” Brown said, referring to June budget deliberations, “and we have turned around and given them these additional funds.”

The school equity discussion, which began when South Pointe opened a decade ago, resurfaced this summer, when Pew asked the accounting firm to audit activity funds at the three high schools.

Its report found that accounting procedures at the high schools were inconsistent, and that South Pointe had several years of deficits in its per-pupil and activity accounts. The board agreed to forgive half the deficit and have South Pointe pay the rest over three years.

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 6:39 PM with the headline "Rock Hill school board agrees to extra money for sports, school supplies."