Parents packed a School Board meeting and community forum Wednesday to weigh in on the future of sports at Boynton Middle School, after the Mascenic district budget failed to pass.
Held in the Boynton cafeteria instead of the SAU offices, the meeting drew parents who voiced strong support for preserving middle school sports through fundraising, pay-to-play or a combination of both.
The discussion followed the defeat of Mascenic’s proposed budget for the third year in a row. The district had proposed a $23,899,107 budget for 2026-27, about 8.75% higher than the default, but voters rejected it March 10. That leaves the district operating under a default budget of $23,431,429, or $467,678 less than the proposal.
In addition to proposed cuts to middle school sports, the district is also facing the elimination of four-and-a-half teaching positions between Boynton Middle School and Highbridge Hill Elementary School, the elimination of extracurricular activities at Boynton and a reduction in administrative assistant hours at the SAU offices.
Superintendent Liz Pogorzelski opened the meeting by outlining possible options for the district and the advantages and drawbacks of each.
She said the total cost of the middle school athletics program is about $82,601. The largest expenses associated with the program are stipends of about $25,500 and transportation costs of about $32,700.
Pogorzelski said one approach to bring down the overall cost of the program would be to change the district’s policy on transporting students, to allow efforts like carpooling rather than transporting students by bus. She said there may be liability issues associated with that.
“If we don’t provide transportation, if an accident did occur, we are more liable,” Pogorzelski explained.
The district reviewed three potential models, including enhanced recreation department programs for younger children, ages 7-12. In this model, seventh and eighth-grade students would likely “play up” and join high school teams to form a junior varsity team. The district has had middle school students play up before.
Even in a JV model, Pogorzelski said, students would be playing with and against high school students, and would require that all potential high school players be placed first before middle school players would be eligible. That could result in less playing time.
“Depending on the sport, you could have a seventh grader competing with 15-year-olds,” Pogorzelski said.
The other model was a “pay-to-play” model, where students and families would pay to have their child participate.
Pogorzelski said most schools that use a pay-to-play model are subsidizing their programs, rather than offsetting the costs completely. The average cost would roughly be $1,000 per student per year.
“It’s also really hard, because we’re not in a position to say no,” Pogorzelski said. “If someone can’t play, we can’t turn them away — we can’t discriminate based on socioeconomic status.”
Pogorzelski said the district has struggled to resolve debts, such as lunch debt. “Chasing parents to pay is really uncomfortable, and it puts those parents in a really uncomfortable position,” she said. “We don’t view this as a viable option.”
But the approach doesn’t address the fundamental problem, Pogorzelski explained — the sports program would still appear in the budget even if offset by revenue and meeting the default requires reducing the bottom line.
The same would be true for the third model: fundraising for the program. The amount to raise for the program would be about $20,000 for the fall and winter seasons and slightly less for the spring. Pogorzelski said this model wouldn’t account for transportation costs.
One of the risks of a fundraising model is that monies would have to be largely in hand upfront, and if it was not raised in time, there would not be enough time for the Recreation Department to develop alternate programs.
Most parents present seemed to favor the fundraising model, suggesting that in addition to reducing transportation, coaches may be willing to give up stipends for a lower budget target. Parents discussed attempting to raise the total budget as a stretch goal, with the budget without transportation as the backup.
Should there still be a gap, it was suggested that pay-to-play could subsidize the fundraising.
Reducing the number of offered programs, rather than cutting them altogether, was also discussed. But Pogorzelski said, with few exceptions, programs were well-attended.
Pogorzelski and School Board Chair Mitch Gluck called for volunteers to form a committee that would spearhead fundraising, set benchmarks for how much needs to be raised and by what deadline and keep discussions moving forward.
The working group is scheduled to meet on April 8 at 6 p.m. at Boynton Middle School in room 212.
In the meantime, the School Board will consider the district’s transportation policies.