District 21 seeks better scheduling

The current system can require principals to thumb through pages of “premise use” requests to see if a new request can be accommodated, something they often don’t have time to do, given their other duties.

Brian Stevens, the head girls’ basketball coach at The Dalles High School, said this year, for the first time in 10 years, his private summer hoops league was rejected for use of gym space.

He said he found out later that the cheer squad was given two of his requested days, even though they had submitted their request a month after he did.

Don Carter, facilities manager for North Wasco County School District 21, said building principals are often pulled from their office to teach. What’s more important, he asked, teaching or looking at premise use agreements?

Soccer coach Oscar Nunez said when he makes a facility request, he doesn’t get told alternate available dates, he’s just told no for the dates he requests.

Matt Morgan, The Dalles High School vice principal and athletic director, said he’s seen a rejected facility use request that would work if the other user moved their time just one hour.

“It was a matter of a single phone call” to the other group, who was willing to move their time slot, he said.

“Let’s try to problem solve instead of a hard ‘No’ and that will go a long way,” Morgan said.

A shared calendar program currently has lots of times left blank, even though gyms or facilities are being used, Carter said, because it is regularly scheduled time, such as gym class, that building administrators do not want to log because it would require so much data entry.

Morgan said inputting scheduled times into a calendar program “is just more data entry and we are all data entry burdened, but it would be helpful.” Stevens offered to do data entry himself.

Nate Morris, the head boys’ basketball coach at the high school, said, “you don’t know when you can schedule things and it makes it really hard to do our job.”

He said he scheduled his team’s summer hoop games away “because I’ve gotten so fed up.”

Carter has a scheduling module that will work with current software.

A central administrative person will have rights to alter data and each school will submit data.

He said the district’s sports facilities — its six gym spaces and 13 fields —are rarely not in use.

Carter said 80 percent or more of field use is not by the school district.

He said the fee structure, set in 2009, is “something we’ve got to talk about.”

School events and non-profit events, which account for 90 percent of use, are not charged for space use. Non-profits and others are charged for additional labor and material costs, but those costs are using the 2009 fee schedule.

When the community uses school buildings, custodial staff are pulled away from their work to “corral” people at events, Carter said.

The honor system of asking people to stay only where the event is held, isn’t always successful. Janitors have found footprints on classroom desks.

Overuse of fields is also an issue. Grass needs to rest between uses to be maintainable, he said.

The more fields get used, it “goes from bad to worse to unsafe to unplayable,” he said.

Nunez said he’s had players hurt because of the poor quality of fields.

Carter said he’s got a two-year plan to improve fields. He’s working with a company that works on collegiate fields.

Stevens suggested a tiered use system, where each building would have priority for the students at that school, followed by the high school, then league teams, and then community teams.

Carter said that type of system used to exist, but then waivers started getting granted so regularly that it became a first-come, first-served system.

Morris said the scheduling calendar needs to be visible to all users. He doesn’t want access to change it; he just wants to see it, he said.

Nate Timmons, a high school and youth football coach, said, “Football is a dying sport, why are we making it harder for kids to come out?”

He said the youth football program wants to use the varsity football field at Wahtonka Community School during four Saturdays.

He felt if the coach wanted the field used, it should be up to the coach.

But Carter said each Saturday would have multiple youth games, which is hard on the turf, especially if its wet and muddy. “On a wet field, a 10-year-old tears it up as much as a 16-year-old.”