No new uniforms. Less travel. Shorter schedules. Fewer teams.
Those are among the ways that Syracuse high schools may have to cope with athletic budget cuts, says a key athletic official.
“We’ve had a number of meetings to come up with some creative ideas of what we can do,” said John Rathbun, executive director of the Section Three Athletics governing body for Central New York high schools. “The reduction of state aid is really affecting every school district.”
The governing body is proposing schedule and travel changes, Rathbun said. It also wants to put a moratorium on purchasing new uniforms. The proposed cost of supplies and uniforms for the city schools is $140,372. That figure was also the same for the 2010-2011 school year.
Schools across the state are facing — again—sharp budget cuts in state funding. That will trickle down to athletics, as well as other parts of the school system.
Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget, Syracuse schools are facing a 10-percent reduction of state aid, or $24 million. The proposed cuts translate into a 20-percent decrease in the athletics budget for the city school district, according to the budget submitted by city school superintendent Daniel Lowengard.
Chris Hodge, the district athletic director, did not respond to several interview requests for this story. The individual school athletic directors were unavailable for comment or referred all inquiries to Hodge. The Syracuse City School Distric includes five area high schools: Corcoran, Nottingham, Henninger, Fowler, and Institute of Technology.
To cope with the budget cuts, Section Three may cut the number of regular season games from 18 to 16, said Rathbun, the executive director. Some schools may not offer the more expensive sports, such as ice hockey, swimming, and gymnastics, Rathbun said.
The most common alternative to cutting teams will be to merge all the schools onto one team for each sport, said Rathbun. “They might have one cross-country team for all four schools, they might have one golf team,” he predicted. “I think you’re going to see that a lot in Syracuse next year.”
(Chari Bayanker is a graduate student in magazine, newspaper and online journalism.)
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