School board talks sports fundraising, drug testing

Sisters school and club sports were a lively topic at Wednesday's school board meeting. Fundraising remains a major challenge for Sisters school sports programs.

"I would feel remiss if I didn't say that the coaches of current active sports that I have spoken to are all struggling from a fundraising standpoint," Andrew Gorayeb reported to his Sisters School Board colleagues last Wednesday.

Gorayeb reported that a recent coaches meeting called by Sisters High School Principal Joe Hosang was "very positive and extremely productive."

"At the end of it," said Gorayeb, "I threw out a straw poll to ask everyone if they thought that drug testing for athletes would be a good idea. All but two coaches raised their hand immediately."

The board agreed to further review the issue of drug testing at their January meetings. Board chair Chris Jones suggested "...an initiative to proceed carefully and pragmatically... to think about what policy issues there are from the district standpoint, and to go forward slowly, but to go forward."

Board vice-chair Glen Lasken said, "I think this an idea worth talking about and exploring, but I would want to know where we are with respect to other districts, and to what extent we have a problem. I suspect that the implementation of the program is not the stumbling block, the hurdle is if this is something that we want to do or not."

Board member Cheryl Stewart suggested, "We need to be clear on why. What is the gain for our student athletes?"

Superintendent Jim Golden reported that the new partnership between Sisters Middle School and Sisters Park & Recreation District went off without a hitch for fall sports. Golden said had no parent complaints. He also reported that SHS principal Hosang sent out a survey to all the parents whose kids participated in fall sports. The survey solicited feedback on the parent and student experience with the fall sports program at the high school.

"Parents greatly, greatly appreciate having an avenue to input into both of you (Golden and Hosang)," Stewart said.

"We didn't have a process in the past, it needs to be more transparent and we do need parent input," said Golden. "I think the community has expressed that in a variety of ways."

Further addressing the issues of process and transparency, the board agreed that all future head coaching jobs will be posted and candidates will be interviewed. All current coaches will be asked to reapply for their job once new guidelines are in place. Golden foresees January-February interviews for fall coaches; March-April interviews for winter coaches, and interviews at the beginning of summer for spring coaches.

Gorayeb noted, "If you see a coach, no matter what coach it is, shake their hand and thank them because a lot of them are working for free."

The board concurred with that sentiment.

As part of the move to innovative sport funding efforts, superintendent Golden reported that SHS coach Rand Runco will be piloting a project by putting up some temporary yurts behind the high school to house basketball camp attendees. The idea is that if the kids stay in town, their parents will also stay in town. Anecdotally, parents now go to Bend or Redmond because it is cheaper and there is more to do. The district would like to keep more of those dollars in town, to benefit the many business community supporters of school sports.