Mays wants closer eye on athletic costs

Whenever a school district appears before the Arkansas Education Board to the face the possibility of state monitoring for financial problems, the first thing Ben Mays takes a look at is how much is being spent on athletics.

Long before he was appointed to the Education Board, Mays had built a reputation in Clinton as someone who viewed with skepticism spending public school dollars on sports and athletic facilities. It's become such a trademark that when he piped in to ask one school district leader a question about its finances last week, Board President Diane Tatum chided him that it better not be about athletics.

It was.

Appointed by former Gov. Mike Huckabee to the board in 2005, Mays said he realizes he's gaining a reputation as someone who will warily eye any money schools are using for athletics. But the Clinton veterinarian said he doesn't mind and says he hopes to see the state playing a greater role in restricting where its funds can be used.

"For some reason these programs seem to be sacred," Mays said. "It's not like I don't like athletics programs. I think we need to find a more legitimate way to fund them than take money that should be going toward classroom instruction."

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It's unlikely that Mays' push for more accountability on athletic spending will lead to any immediate changes in how school districts pay for football fields, basketball coaches or other sports costs. For some small communities, sports can be a lifeblood and a unifier. Others will argue that you can't single out sports and ignore other extracurricular activities.

But Mays' crusade against what he views as out-of-control spending on sports shows where the new debate on school funding is now headed in a post-Lake View Arkansas.

Nearly a year has passed since Arkansas' Supreme Court ended the long-running Lake View case, ruling that the state had finally provided enough money to pay for an adequate education for its 450,000 public school students. The case ended shortly after legislators increased per-student funding by $121 million and set aside $456 million for a program to repair school facilities and build new ones.

Outgoing Senate Education Committee Chairman Jim Argue told a daylong forum studying the impact of the case that the next step will be monitoring where the money that the state pumped into the system is going.

"Our funding is clearly adequate. The question is, how are we spending those dollars?" Argue, D-Little Rock, said last week. "We talk about the funding matrix and what we do is say here are the resources that ought to be in every school and here's how much those resources cost and here's the money. What we don't do is say here's how you're going to spend it."

No area is more ripe for that discussion than school athletics, Mays said.

"Athletics was not included in that definition of adequacy for obvious reasons," Mays said. "The argument just doesn't fly that a child has to know how to play basketball in order to receive an adequate education."

The state is making strides in learning how much money is being spent on sports, but Mays said more accountability and better tracking of those dollars is needed.

Joshua Barnett, a senior research associate with the University of Arkansas Office of Education Policy, said part of the problem in tracking the money is how much some districts are underreporting or failing to report their spending on athletics.

Barnett's research found that school districts were spending $227 per pupil on athletics in the 2005-2006 school year and $270 per pupil the following school year. The shortcoming of those figures, though, is it doesn't take into account that all students are not athletes.

Barnett said tracking the number of students who participate in sports statewide would help officials figure out how much schools are spending per athlete.

"We could answer those questions and have real live data that would tell us on a statewide level or a geographic level or a district-size level where this money is going. It could help us answer the question, are they making good choices about how they spend athletic money?" Barnett said.

Mays said he's not trying to shut down money for athletics entirely but said communities need to play a larger role in paying for sports. He also suggests that sports may need their own revenue source to avoid taking away from classroom instruction.

"I wouldn't object to having a state tax that provided for youth athletic opportunities or recreation opportunities around the state or have some sort of state fund and have the people vote on it," Mays said.

It's a crusade that Mays acknowledges hasn't won him any friends, particularly among schools targeted by his scrutiny when they face the possibility of being placed on the state's fiscal distress list. But he says it's a discussion that needs to continue.

"I think that's the only way it's ever going to work, because there is this very seductive arms race for winning that just makes people go a little bit crazy," Mays said.

Andrew DeMillo covers Arkansas government and politics for The Associated Press.