School district budgets are notorious for being surprisingly high due to their complexity. Families and students have always had questions about what schools spend their budget on. Here at Victor the general budget is not hard to find, but lacks specificity of an exact breakdown. 

One area that interested me, and affects many of our students is the budget line for co-curricular and interscholastic athletics. We are highly regarded for sports and they are a big focus of our district.  I did some digging on our expenditures and spoke with Mr. Weimer to clarify the interesting things I found.

Mr.Weimer is the head of our athletic department here at Victor. He focuses on physical and health education along with athletics. According to a school budget proposal, Victor spent $98,924,377 dollars in 2023-2024. $507,160 (.005%) of that was spent solely on athletics. While that may seem insignificant, how much of that is being spent on what could be considered overfunded sports and an excessive waste of supplies?

Our overall spending on athletics has increased more every year since 2021 for health education and uniforms along with other miscellaneous expenses. The biggest increase was for new coaches and staff as a result of contract changes. Their bigger salaries increased the program’s budget. 

While I did not receive an exact value, this brought me to some of the top programs Victor focuses on: Ice Hockey, Track and Field, Football, Alpine Skiing, and surprisingly Bowling. “You can see the trend of what’s most expensive and it’s really what’s going off campus.. And costs of equipment”, Weimer explained. 

The reasons why these are our top funding sports is because of equipment and time fees:

• Track recently started using Pinnacle for Indoor events which costs ~$400 per hour
• Football helmets for all players will cost between ~$70-90k every 10 years
• Cheer and Wrestling mats cost between ~$10-15k, about $1k per roll

This has majorly impacted how schools decide to spend money. A used version of the same Riddell helmet our school uses for football can be bought online for ⅓ of the price. This would be ~$40k saved. While this expenditure is understandable for the top-notch items, buying used versions could save us dollars that could be put elsewhere.

Acknowledging this, Weimer replied “We’re Title IX compliant..we look at realistically how much we spend for boys and girls and it’s equitable. It may not be to the dollar amount but we make sure the experience, the funds we spend, [are equal] between programs”.

While this may ring true for some, looking at other sports may indicate otherwise. Uniforms are what intrigued me the most. Having previously played softball almost my whole life, I remembered being on the Modified team with jerseys that were more in need of touch-ups.  When mentioning this, Weimer was quick to accept this claim, “You’re correct in your assumption Varsity will typically get the newest [uniforms]… because they are our highest level program…”. 

In prior years boosters have held the majority of the responsibility to obtain money to get uniforms. Only in the ‘22-’23 school year did Victor start to help take on this tasking job.  Modified teams have their own budget within the annual one, where they get off-brand uniforms- mainly reversible ones. 

With a $90k annual increase, ~$11k per the 8 programs Victor recognizes, why have we not brought our attention to allocating more of our money to the teams that need it? When asked about this increase Weimer stated, saying, “We have so many more modified athletes we need to be more cautious with how we’re spending that budget.” 

When exploring why the performing arts department may be using old costumes presuming they get the same funding, he admittedly said “I don’t know… Prior to 2021 we were in a similar position [with performing arts]… We relied heavily on our booster program… What I do know is that the performing arts and athletics budgets are very similar. I just don’t know how those funds are spent.” 

One disparity between sports is how victories are celebrated. It’s common knowledge among students that certain ones are covered more than others. This initiated questions like: do all championship sports get the same rewards/treatment? If yes, why do we not see other sports highlighted? 

He broke this down by mentioning any luncheons, events, etc. by Section V are privately sponsored and do not cost them or us anything- except if transportation is needed. Again boosters were brought into the equation, “Not all champions luncheons are equal, it all depends on what the chairman for that particular sport is doing to gain sponsorship. You bring up a great point… there should be some consistency when it comes to those luncheons.” 

While boosters certainly maintain funding for our teams, putting the burden of this on them makes all heads turn to say: why aren’t you promoting us more? Why do they get better benefits? It is unfair to rely on them to these situations equal, when we should’ve been doing that all along. While some reliable and engaging topics were discussed, I think there is more we need to start doing to provide for others at this school.