Peninsula implements "participation donations"

Written by lianne huang | 17 July 2010

Over the last few months, the PVPUSD has been struggling to overcome the issue of budget cuts. In the 2010-2011 school year, there will be a budget shortfall of four million dollars. Since district and site administrators concur to the idea of protecting core academic programs and saving as many teacher and counselor jobs as possible, the District reduced funding in the area of athletics and extra-curricular programs by approximately 300,000 dollars at each school.

Although sports and extra-curricular activities will not be sponsored by the District, they will still be available at Peninsula. Starting in 2010, Peninsula High will call for students to pay a “participation donation” for athletic teams and extra-curricular programs. This donation will help make up for the 300,000 dollar loss in funding.

Athletic participation donations will help fund equipment, bus transportation, coaching stipends, tournament entry fees, officials, security, athletic trainer expenses and other miscellaneous expenses. The extra-curricular participation donation funding will help fund the salaries for the advisor(s) and bus transportation.

Unfortunately, if not enough participation donations accrue for a certain sport or extra-curricular activity, there will be cuts; this means that there will be fewer teams, programs, coaches, buses, tournaments, concerts, or competitions.

Below is a table of participation donation amounts required for each sport or activity.