Fact & Fiction About the Pool

A message to the community from the Superintendent of the Coronado Unified School District A financial crisis exists in our state that will eventually destroy Coronado schools if left unchecked. California public schools have never experienced a collapse of revenue comparable to the one currently at hand. School districts everywhere are scrambling to stay alive and our schools are no exception. It is up to us as a community to find our own way out of this mess. But before we can focus our communal attention and passion on creative funding options, we have to face the financial issues surrounding the district aquatic facility. Because finances concerning the pool are still not clearly understood by many Coronado residents, it is important to clarify the facts and dispel the fiction surrounding the Brian Bent Memorial Aquatics Facility (BBMAC). 1. The pool is an asset owned by the Coronado Unified School District (CUSD). The BBMAC Foundation has been contracted to maintain and operate the pool and all funding for operations comes from sources outside the school district. 2. The pool has not been and is not the source of the school district’s fiscal challenge. The district does not expend any general funds on the running of pool operations. 3. No monies from CUSD support the pool’s maintenance or operational costs. 4. There is no connection between the school board’s investigation of a parcel tax and the pool. Anyone associating a parcel tax with the pool is either misinformed or purposely misleading. Taxpayers are not being asked to subsidize the pool. 5. The school district has never asked the City of Coronado to subsidize the pool or take over the running of the pool. 6. CUSD uses the pool for aquatics Physical Education (PE) and extracurricular team sport activities. CUSD does not pay for its use of the pool. 7. The term of the BBMAC Foundation contract is for as long as the terms of the contract are met. Those terms will come up for discussion and/or renegotiation in September 2009. There are several contract provisions that are important for the public to understand. While under contract, CUSD may not act or in any way interfere with the contracted operator’s ability to run the pool. This point seems confusing because the BBMAC Foundation is made up of prominent local citizens and we communicate closely for the benefit of the children. It is best to think of this situation as if the contracted operator was a party outside of Coronado with no other personal or business interests in the City of Coronado or the school district. To make it more confusing to understand, the contract preserves priority of pool use for district aquatic and team sport use at no cost to the district. This creates a great financial burden on the BBMAC Foundation and makes the financial operation of the pool almost impossible to be profitable. To help with this financial deficit, community members donated $1.2 million several years ago to an endowment for the pool. The contract includes reporting requirements and limited access to this district-held endowment fund specified for the purpose of maintaining and operating the pool. The BBMAC Foundation will reach the $600,000 minimum endowment level specified by CUSD sometime within the next 8 months perhaps even as early as the Fall of 2009. Should the stated minimum level of the endowment be reached, CUSD will consider all options available to it in order to maintain the current district use of the facility for aquatics education and team sport use. These options include, but are not limited to, canceling athletic team use of the facility, canceling PE aquatics instruction, and/or ceasing all operations at the facility and placing it in a “mothball” status. Another option could be dismantling the facility and converting the site to another use, which is an unlikely, cost prohibitive option. None of these options are pleasant to consider. But until the Coronado community can find another source of funding or develop a better business plan than what is in place that will allow sustained operations with no impact on CUSD finances, these options and many others will be considered. CUSD should not have activities and programs at any school or facility that it cannot afford, The BBMAC foundation should not be asked to continue to subsidize CUSD activities and programs to the extent that it precludes their chances to become solvent. Let me be very clear: the BBMAC Foundation is doing a top-notch job of operating this pool. They are well-organized volunteers with caring hearts for the children of this community. They have hired an intelligent, experienced, and hard-working pool director who has brought the facility from the brink of bankruptcy to a very stable environment. All they need is more time to bring the pool to a state of financial normalcy compared to other facilities of its kind. But to do that, they will need additional funding and the district has barely enough to maintain core educational programs. This is clearly a time for the community to step in and assist with additional giving.