For school districts struggling to make ends meet and looking for more places to cut, a drastic idea has emerged: eliminating coaching stipends. Chris Johnson, Athletic Director at Ripon (Calif.) High School, is one administrator who faced such a proposal, fought it, and won.

In January, a Ripon budget committee proposed cutting all extra duty pay for after-school activities, including $76,000 in coaching stipends. More than 20 years ago, the district stopped funding other expenses for the athletics program, relying on fundraising and charging athletic participation fees to pay for transportation, officials, and equipment. Coaching stipends were reduced by 20 percent last year.

Johnson believed eliminating coaching payments completely would ultimately destroy the athletics program. "Most coaches put the money right back into their teams," he says. "If there were no stipends, it would actually cost them to keep coaching. Most would go look for jobs at other schools--maybe be an assistant coach and face a lot fewer headaches."

Johnson's first step was to make it clear to the community what was at stake. That included writing a letter to the editor of the local paper that outlined how the impact would extend beyond sports.

"I argued that it would be the death of the school," Johnson says. "Fifty percent of our students play sports, and I believed that many parents of those students would move their kids to a private school or another district if they could afford it. The result would be less students, and the money we get from the state based on daily attendance would decrease.

"Plus I really believe that athletics is a school's direct connection to the community," he continues. "When people look from the outside, they don't see the science experiments and all the other academic activities. They see the basketball teams and the football team."

Johnson also talked to parents, asking them to initiate discussions with others. "I needed them to realize that it was getting serious--their kids and their school were going to be directly impacted," he says.

One of the discussions that arose was how the entire community could better work together. "Instead of having a travel team that's raising money over here and a high school team raising money over there, maybe we need to come together as a community and decide what kind of programs we should provide for our kids," Johnson says. "Are we looking at having a cohesive program or many teams go their own way and compete with each other for funds?"

Throughout his pleas to the community, Johnson was careful to not talk about money specifically. "One in seven people in San Joaquin County are unemployed, so it's tough to start complaining about losing a $2,000 stipend," he says. "It's really about valuing the programming we have."

He was also careful not to pit teams against each other. "Everyone in the athletic department spoke with a unified voice," says Johnson, who is also the school's head football coach. "But that only works if there's no hierarchy. The football coach is no more important than the softball coach who is no more important than the swimming coach."

In the end, all of Johnson's efforts paid off, as the school board eventually removed the coaches' stipends from the proposed budget cuts. "Our community rallied together to let our school board know how much they value the athletic program at the high school and the coaches that drive the program," he says. "We will see what the future holds, although I imagine this is an issue that's not going to go away. It will take community wide efforts to continue to keep high school sports alive."