Balancing a school’s budget might be one of the most depressing ways to spend time. In too many districts, money always seems to be tighter than the year before, and administrators are faced with laundry lists of services too valuable to cut. Schools are forced to make choices about which teachers to keep, what supplies to buy, and which extracurricular activities to fund.
Every aspect of education is important, but school officials have to devise strategies that make the most of limited resources and stretch the few dollars in their coffers to do the most good.
Because budgets are largely based on enrollment, attracting more students can be the key to gaining more funding. In Chicago, for example, enrollment decline is causing nearly two-thirds of its schools to receive smaller budgets than in the previous year, and those could still face further cuts. Even at private schools, higher enrollment means more students paying tuition. So how do schools attract more students?
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One of the most powerful magnets is a well-known and respected athletics program, which is important even for nonathletes. Sports are the facet of any school most visible to the public, and their success can create excitement that leads families through gateways and into school communities.
A study from New Orleans showed that parents who choose where their children enroll often prefer schools with strong athletics programs and other qualities over those with top academic rankings. A well-known football team and band program can make a school more desirable than an academically superior institution that lacks those extracurricular activities.
However, it’s not getting any cheaper or easier to run an athletic department, so it can be tough to invest in the future of a department in order to attract additional students. But schools increasingly leverage a secret weapon in solving this chicken-and-egg problem: technology.
That doesn’t mean an iPad for every student. All sorts of free or cost-effective technological resources exist to aid in communication, school fundraising, and more. Athletic directors and other school administrators who learn about these tools and use the best ones for their communities will have the upper hand in stretching budgets and attracting students.
For starters, technology can dramatically improve communication, an area where schools have struggled. For sports to succeed (or even survive), coaches, parents, students, teachers, administrators, and community members need to be well-connected. Many free tools such as Google Docs and Dropbox allow people to communicate and collaborate easily, whether that’s through sharing photos of last night’s game or signing up to volunteer at the concession stand. Such applications don’t have to factor into budgets and may end up saving money.
Lee Laskowski, the assistant athletic director at Clayton High School in St. Louis County, Mo., uses technology to give his school a collective identity and connect its sports program with the broader community. For him, simply putting more information online eases communication and creates more time to focus on the actual programs.
“I’m trying to build a one-stop shop online for our coaches, students, parents, and the community to get their information,” Laskowski explains. “I’m finding that the time I used to spend on the phone is helping me enhance what we are doing. Going to games, taking photos, sending alerts, and posting articles is helping us reach more people and improving Clayton’s image.”
Some tools not only save money, but they also help raise more for the schools. Varsity News Network’s platform allows athletic directors to update their athletic department websites, communicate with parents and students through email or text, and update scores automatically. It also comes with a built-in sales force to boost school fundraising efforts. Another example is PlayOn! Sports, a video streaming tool designed to connect parents to games they can’t attend in person. The tool also helps schools raise money by charging parents to watch the videos and giving a percentage to the school.
Other tools help community engagement and athletic performance. Electronic scoring apps Game Changer and iScore allow coaches and players to record scores and stats at games while simultaneously providing live game updates and recaps. Scheduling system rSchoolToday combines education and sports schedules to make it easier for parents, faculty, coaches, and players to see different calendars throughout the school district. And video analysis program Hudl lets coaches and players play back games, track statistics, keep up-to-date with their performances, and learn how they can improve, even allowing athletes to share their own custom highlight reels.
These technologies allow schools to leverage the greatest asset they have — their people — to counter shrinking budgets, raise funds, build communities, and improve their programs.
Parents, coaches, students, and staff members need to be on board with these technological tools, but how can schools recruit them? First, schools can lower financial barriers by testing free versions of services, which neutralizes the risk of wasting money. Whenever possible, schools can find ways to put devices into the hands of coaches or parents to let them try new tools on the spot, asking them to push the first key and watching as they grow more comfortable exploring the possibilities of new apps and programs.
Technology is the key to tying communities together, so schools should make it easy for everyone to be involved. By creating tight-knit, highly respected extracurricular programs, it will be easy to stand out and draw the right students, athletes or not. And that is a worthwhile investment.
Investing often means using financial resources to improve something, which isn’t an option for many schools. But using the right technologies can help make the most of scarce resources and might help increase schools’ funding in the years to come.
Ryan Vaughn is the co-founder of Varsity News Network, the largest and fastest-growing network for school sports. VNN’s product facilitates the digital communication of nearly 10 percent of U.S. high schools after only three years in the marketplace.