Elwood doomsday budget would cut athletics

Framing it as a hard choice among competing priorities, Elwood schools Superintendent Peter Scordo said extracurricular programs like athletics could be dropped under a doomsday budget presented Thursday night as a way to avoid cuts to academic programs.

Scordo presented the worst-case scenario budget at a board of education meeting. More than 150 people attended the meeting where Scordo laid out what he called a contingency budget recommending cutting the district's roughly $800,000 athletics program from the more than $50-million proposed budget.

He offered the budget cuts for 2011-12 as a choice between academic programs on the one hand and doing away with athletics on the other. Scordo said he'd choose the latter for axing.

Voters must approve the district budget in the spring. Scordo said the budget proposal is preliminary. Extracurricular programs such as athletics could be saved, Scordo said, depending on the size of the budget. To keep athletics and other programs intact, the budget for 2011-12 would have to be about $55.6 million, Scordo said after the meeting.

The dire predictions for Elwood's programs come as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's plan to cap annual property taxes statewide at 2 percent is considered by legislators in Albany. If passed, the cap would take effect in 2012-13.

Scordo said such a cap could prohibit budget increases at a level needed annually to fund a variety of school programs, Scordo said. If the doomsday budget has to be implemented in the spring, future budgets would not contain enough for sports and other programs./

Several board members who spoke Thursday night seemed dismayed at the prospect of having to cut athletics.

"I can't see having a school without them," said board member Patricia Matos.

Nick Wagner, 17, a junior at John Glenn High School in Elwood, and a receiver on the football team, got a rousing ovation after pleading with the board to keep athletics and warning what might happen without them.

"Kids would go home at 2:30 and do what with their lives?" he asked during public comments. "You can't do anything but get in trouble."