As the Hamilton County school board considers where to invest an additional $2 million next year, members emphasized the importance sports has on retaining students.
Historically, said school board member Ben Daugherty, R-Signal Mountain, sports is an area that he believes the district has underfunded, and it affects a significant portion of the student population.
At a finance committee meeting Monday, he proposed allocating $1.1 million to athletics and $500,000 to fine arts and band.
District officials presented the second version of the 2026-27 budget, which largely mirrors the version presented in April. The proposed budget sets aside $14 million for employee compensation and includes a 5% reduction in central office staffing and a 2% reduction in school-based staffing.
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The proposed pay increase would include a combination of switching to a new pay structure, a 1% raise and a longevity increase. On average, certified staff, such as teachers and school counselors, would see a 3.5% pay increase, according to budget documents, while general staff, like educational assistants and administrators, would get a 2.25% pay increase.
After those costs and reductions are accounted for, the school board has $2 million in unallocated funds to invest in other priorities.
Tim James, the district’s athletic director, said he’d invest additional funding in coaching stipends, providing schools funding for safety and transportation costs and facilities maintenance.
Currently, he said, schools and sports programs have to fund their own transportation to and security at games, and coaches are on their own, for the most part, for general maintenance, such as fertilizing the field and maintaining the lawnmower. Security costs have grown exponentially over the past four years, he said, and that’s a heavy burden on many schools.
Coaches in certain sports have also been historically underpaid, he said. The district supplements its coaches’ pay with a percentage of their teaching salaries, with the percentage varying depending on the sport and coaching position.
“I’ve seen some coaches that don’t get paid hardly anything that work their tail off, but I think, if you feel like you’re getting paid more, you feel more value, you’re going to put more into it,” James said. “That would also allow us to retain some of the better coaches in the area.”
The district is losing its best athletes to better funded programs and needs to be more competitive, said school board member Jodi Schafer, R-East Hamilton.
Beyond funding, she said, that includes strategically thinking about which schools can compete for state championships and which schools have sports opportunities but may never reach championship level.
“As a county, we need to start winning state championships,” she said. “We need to think about this as a board and how it’s not going to be equalization because, if we are trying to be equal in every sport and every school, we will continue to lose our athletes and we will continue to not win state championships. It’s just a really hard realization.”
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The athletic landscape is changing dramatically, Superintendent Justin Robertson said. In April, the group that writes the rules all member schools must abide by gave all student-athletes the ability to transfer schools one time, for any reason, without losing eligibility.
If the district doesn’t adjust how it’s approaching athletics, Robertson said, it’s going to be left even further behind.
“It’s not saying that every school won’t have opportunity, but we do know that the landscape is changing, and if we just ignore it, what we’re going to end up doing is hurting every school and hurting opportunities for kids across the district,” he said.
One of the great things the district has that most nearby schools — private and other public — don’t is that a student doesn’t have to be the best to still get to participate at a high level in high school sports, he said. That’s something the district needs to protect while also recognizing the changes.
Other areas for which members discussed providing additional funding include a $335,000 ask from the facilities department to replace aging equipment, as well as an $400,000 ask from the exceptional education department for more behavior program classes. Exceptional education serves students with disabilities, as well as those identified as gifted.
The board is expected to vote on its final budget May 21. It will then head to the Hamilton County Commission, which serves as the funding body for the district, for a vote.
Contact education reporter Shannon Coan at scoan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.