Pre-existing policies governing district funding for extracurriculars and co-curriculars have been more strictly enforced by the D219 Financial Committee for the current school year.
Assistant Superintendent for Business James Vreeland outlines the reason for the reinforcements.
“We’re aligning processes and procedures to what’s in board policy, so there isn’t a cut in the budget; the realignment is based on what policy says about what the responsibility of the district and what is the responsibility of the club through fundraising,” Vreeland said. “It’s the same expectation we have for athletics, co-curriculars, and extracurriculars related to what’s outlined in policy.”
The process for the district’s allocation of funding towards extracurricular club funding is multi-tiered.
“We first have a finance committee meeting with all of the board members and they have to commission the business office to start budget development,” Vreeland said. “I work with the director of finance and operations on creating templates for each of the curriculum directors to work through with their departments, and the departments go through and allocate the monies they feel are appropriate for purchase services, supplies, textbooks, and all of these components, which include clubs. Anything that’s not budgetary, that’s in addition to student-based, comes through student activities.”
One rule that was reinforced by the board was the 70/30 rule codified in board policy 6:190, which states that district funds 30% of out-of-state competitions and 70% is raised by clubs. 6:190 also states that trips must be approved by a supervising administrator. The only exception is the debate team, whose overnight season trips are not subject to field trip review.
HOSA sponsor Ali Sayed mentions how the club has been impacted by the new changes.
“We’ve had to be really aggressive with fundraising,” Sayed said. “But even with that, it still doesn’t cover all the costs because travel costs are rising, so we’re really struggling to meet our fundraising targets. I’m having to charge students more for travel to national competitions and state competitions because of food costs not being covered.”
Senior Mysha Kazi is a Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) officer this school year. HOSA holds a state officer conference in Springfield, IL, for all of the officers in every chapter. Kazi received an email from Sayed on Sept. 21 stating that “the district would not be providing financial support to go on this trip because it is not a competition,” and he had decided to cancel the trip.
“We didn’t have a chance to go on it because it would come out of our pocket and Mr. Sayed said that he’d rather us save the money for [the] state [competition],” Kazi said. “It affected me because the officers were able to go on the yearly officer trip and now going to state is coming out of our pocket. I think it is overwhelming because a lot of clubs are fundraising to get the money so each club can thrive.”
