The Juneau School District wants to consolidate its two high school football programs and cheer squads.
Superintendent Mark Miller said at a press conference Thursday afternoon that the decision to send a formal request to the Alaska School Activities Association has been two years in the making. If approved, Thunder Mountain High School students would be able to play for the team at Juneau-Douglas High School.
“Financial sustainability was kind of the tipping point and what led us to go with one school versus the other,” Miller said. “With the state of finances that we are in in the state of Alaska and what we’ve had to do with reducing activities, we had to look at which of the two programs had the best shot at financial sustainability.”
Both schools have struggled to fund their teams in recent years, coupled with a decline in participation that has forced coaches to play freshmen and sophomores against larger and more experienced junior and senior players from other teams. Travel has been reduced to only three away games per team.
The estimated annual budget for each of the football teams is about $70,000, Miller said. At the beginning of the 2017 season, the Juneau-Douglas High School football program’s account had a negative balance of $5,689. Thunder Mountain High School’s account was short $100,821.
The district will send the formal request to ASAA by the Nov. 1 deadline and expects a decision by the end of the month.
Director of Student Services Bridget Weiss said this decision is not permanent.
“This would actually be on an annual basis, that we would go back to ASAA and request this waiver, as far as I’m aware at least,” Weiss said. “As in any decision, we just have to be responsive to the needs of a community, of our students, of our programs, of our fundings.”
Miller said the district looked at a number of factors to make the decision. It wanted students to be able to attend the school of their choice without limited activities influencing that choice.
“We don’t the football tail to wag the dog, right? We’re worried about students’ academic success first, the academic support we can give them and then activities is extra. So we want to make sure that their academic needs are met first and then the activities are supported in any way we can,” said Miller.
If ASAA approves the request, Miller said consolidating the football teams would likely move the district back into Division I in the Railbelt Conference.
Decisions on team uniforms, coaching staff and other details would be determined later.