Kimon Tiffith, 10, does jumping jacks during a football camp at Canyon Springs High School Saturday, June 8, 2019.
Thursday, April 18, 2024 | 2 a.m.
At least one youth sports organizer fears that new Clark County School District facility use rules will price him out of his leagues’ only options to play their games.
A provision of the new rules requires private leagues to front the cost of at least two school district police officers to provide security at every game on a CCSD field or court. The cost would be nearly $60 per hour, per officer.
Added to the existing fees for school custodians and the actual field rentals, that would cost the nonprofit National Youth Sports Nevada about $17,000 per day during fall football season alone, said Michael MacLeod, the organization’s director of business development.
If the group must absorb the cost, or pass it on to parents, he fears the worst.
“Tackle (youth) football would be gone from Southern Nevada,” he said. “We are the only ones that offer it.”
His anxiety comes from a March document from CCSD’s Secondary Student Athletics and Activities Department that said school police logs showed “a majority” of sporting events contested on school property by outside groups last summer required officer responses “due to disruptive participants and other various incidents.”
Events organized by municipal parks and recreation departments would be exempt. Otherwise, “no exceptions will be made,” the memo said. “The requester is not allowed to provide their own security of district facilities.”
The district added that if the attendee count was “greater than what two school police officers can safely supervise, additional school police officers will be assigned.”
The overhaul of district guidelines for nonschool-sponsored athletics also eliminates the ability for individual schools to create agreements — essentially accepting direct donations of cash, equipment or apparel to their teams — in exchange for facility access.
Rich Muraco, athletic director at Liberty High School, said these agreements could bring down what could be high overhead costs for outside groups.
“Then on top of that, they threw in the police thing, and that is a killer for an organization like NYS,” he said.
In numerical terms, it might almost triple costs.
The district athletics department made the policy recommendation to have the police requirement for nonschool-related sports, a district spokesman explained. CCSD’s administration then collectively approved the recommendation, the spokesman said.
The district didn’t give a specific answer to the Sun when we repeatedly asked if there was a specific incident that triggered the fee increase. It instead gave a general statement saying the district “plans to continue evaluating facility and staffing costs associated with the facility rental process. As additional stakeholder information is collected, the District will continue conversations with community stakeholders regarding streamlining the process.”
MacLeod said during a 10-week football season, his group fans out to 10 fields for its Saturday games. To get all the age groups in — teams field players from ages 5 to 14 — plus set up and tear down, people are on site for about 10 hours.
The fields themselves cost $12 an hour. Custodians cost about $51 an hour to unlock and resecure the grounds, and be on hand to keep the premises clean.
Under the old fee structure, that comes out to about $65,000 per season of tackle football, not counting the thousands the leagues opt to donate to their host schools. (The leagues compete in tackle football in the spring and fall; they also offer flag football, soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball and cheer throughout the year).
Under the new rules, the cost to operate a full 10-week football season would balloon to about $174,000. Leagues would stop making donations to individual schools because they would no longer be able to afford them, MacLeod said.
A facility rental process is required for all outside groups who request to use school district property for events. People can rent athletic facilities and other spaces like classrooms, cafeterias and libraries for a variety of community uses, including civic events like political parties’ candidate nominating caucuses.
The cost to rent any part of a school, including playing surfaces, is subject to change annually, although most are the same as they were last year, according to a district rate sheet — $12 per hour for football, baseball, softball, soccer and track facilities; $23 an hour for full-sized gymnasiums; and $20 an hour for smaller auxiliary gyms at high schools during nonschool hours, if the user is a nonprofit group.
The district added one new category this spring: gyms used for tournaments between June and September. These will cost $100 per hour, more than four times the prior rate.
The Sun asked the district why all outside sports would be subject to police coverage when the district memo said the problem originated in the summer; about how frequently facilities are requested; and what would happen if there aren’t enough officers to go around.
They instead sent the following statement:
“As good stewards of taxpayer dollars, CCSD must balance the costs of providing safe environments for groups using facilities with the non-budgeted staffing costs for the outside event. Additionally, maintenance for added wear, tear, and damage caused by outside groups to District facilities should not be paid for using educational funds,” the district said in a statement. “The facility rental process is required for all outside groups who request to use school district property for events. The change in procedure was necessary to ensure the outside group paid all the required costs associated with the event and to minimize the need to send a supplemental invoice to the group after the event concluded.”
The district’s reservation portal says requests are individually approved by each site, meaning a school principal must sign off before a group uses the campus — for everything from a church outing, scouting or Election Day. The rental process, including fees, doesn’t need the approval of the Clark County School Board because it’s operational and handled administratively, the district spokesperson said.
Muraco says he knows the challenges of making his school’s site available to the community. Especially with larger tournaments, he said, there are concerns over crowd control, wear and tear on turf and fences, and the chance that tensions can boil over among participants or spectators.
“But to just blanketly state every event has got to have two police officers, it just doesn’t make sense,” said Muraco, who is also Liberty’s football coach.
There aren’t enough district police officers to cover football games at CCSD high schools, he said. Schools also bring in city police on Friday nights, he said.
Municipal sports facilities, especially for football, are limited, MacLeod said. Only a handful exist outside of schools.
Plus, he likes CCSD high school stadiums because parents and other spectators are in stands, which puts a few stairs, a chain-link fence and a running track between them and the action. He credits the setup with why his group only has one or two security incidents in a football season out of hundreds of games.
He estimated that he’d have to add about $40 to registration fees if he were to pass along the cost of mandatory police coverage to his players’ families. Many of his young athletes come from low-income homes, he said.
“I just can’t imagine (CCSD) sticking to it,” he said. “This is clearly an overreach.”
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