In early 2025, Grossmont Union High School District’s board majority said the district was facing an ongoing budget shortfall that required them to cut a number of positions, including teacher-librarians.
The decision sparked a public outcry so intense that a board meeting in February 2025 had to be moved to another room.
Fast-forward to the board’s regular meetings this summer, and members of that same board majority, including Scott Eckert, Gary Woods and Jim Kelly, voted to increase athletics funds by roughly $3.9 million.
Among other things, the new money will go toward increasing pay for head coaches and athletic directors. It will also ensure schools have athletic trainers and add up to 20 additional athletic coaching stipends at each of the district’s nine schools. A portion will also go toward other extracurricular activities.
Board members cast their votes knowing they were adding to the district's budget deficit. Superintendent Kirsten Vital Brutle made this clear during the board’s regular meeting in July.
“And I do, as your superintendent, have to let you know that again, this will add to our deficit spend,” Vital Brulte said during the July regular meeting. “We don't have this money. I fully support athletics, performing arts, but we have some work to do to prioritize priorities, and that takes time. So it's really hard to do this work in this way.”
Members of the board majority claim the money must be spent to help stem enrollment declines. They say the district will attract and retain more students if it can compete with other high school athletic programs, including the charter high schools in the district — Helix and Steele Canyon.
“We are losing lots of students and when we promote athletics, we’re going to retain more students, we’re going to attract more students,” said Trustee Scott Eckert in the July meeting.
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The board majority did not document this assertion with any specific enrollment numbers. But Donnie Carroll, president of the Grossmont Athletic Conference, gave a vague reference to the attrition at the July meeting.
“I won’t name one of the schools I’ve spoke to but they lose 300 kids a year to Steele Canyon, Helix and outside the district,” Carroll said.
The board approved two separate items (one vote was in June and the other in July) on the athletics funding. Both votes passed 3-2, with trustees Chris Fite and Robert Shield casting the dissenting votes.
“I'm not against athletics, but there is no data to show that we will recoup this money,” Fite said at the meeting.
In his comments, Shield likened the board majority to politicians in Washington D.C.
“It concerns me greatly that we are now basically spending $3.9 million on just athletics … without any plan to fund this, which sounds suspiciously like how Congress works,” Shield said. “So for those of you that call yourself fiscal conservatives, I want you to stop and really consider the application of that.”
A district spokesperson declined to make the superintendent or members of the board available for interviews, but did email a statement to KPBS.
“With the start of the new school year next week, (Vital Brulte’s) focus is on the operational demands of opening schools and, with respect to the athletics resolutions, carrying out the direction provided by the Governing Board through its adopted resolutions, as is her responsibility as Superintendent,” the statement said.
Questioning impact of sports on enrollment
One expert is skeptical of the idea that boosting spending on athletics has a significant impact on enrollment and retention.
“Athletics are important for learning about teamwork and keeping some students in school, and the evidence of that is mixed in terms of keeping them in school,” said Lawrence Picus, professor of education policy and finance at the USC Rossier School of Education. “I think it might increase enrollment at the margins. That is, a few more students may show up. But most likely, that would be to recruit potential superstar football players.”
Picus said the money might be better spent on improving college acceptance rates. Picus also highlighted the importance of school boards communicating their decision making and gathering community input.
“There's lots of evidence that people are a lot happier about decisions if they understood what was going into the decision in advance and at least had a chance to talk about it,” Picus said.
Another expert also said transparency among district school boards, staff and the public is key, especially on budget issues.
“All of us, as leaders, regardless of our title, our seat, when there are questions asked, when there's dissonance in the system, perhaps, the best practice is to have more conversation versus less,” said Greg Ottinger, executive director for the National Center for Urban School Transformation. He previously was the chief business and financial officer for a number of years at San Diego Unified School District.
Both Picus and Ottinger said a district’s budget decisions speak to its values.
“When it comes down to it, budgets are statements of priorities,” Ottinger said. “However, from a board perspective, responsible budgeting also requires understanding and helping making sure the public understands whether these are ongoing commitments, whether the funding is restricted or unrestricted.”
The board’s decision was particularly galling to those who fought last year against the librarian cuts, including Mount Miguel High School history teacher Jason Balistreri. He’s a former librarian and lacrosse coach.
“I understand the plight of athletics and coaches to fundraise and pay for refs and athletic trainers, and there's some good, but this just seems an obscene allocation of resources away from, I would biasedly say, should be first spent in the classroom, in libraries, in academics,” Balistreri said.
A former Grossmont Union student agrees that if the district has more money for sports, it should also have money for libraries.
“If they have the money to fund sports, I believe they should also have the money to bring back the librarians that they cut last year, and they should have the money to restore the services,” said Noah Green, a recent graduate of Grossmont High School.
Racially charged remarks
At the board’s June meeting, trustee Jim Kelly deepened the controversy with racially charged comments from the dais.
“I don't know if I can tell the story. There's a number of kids — a lot of minority kids, a lot of fatherless kids, Black, Hispanic, poor," Kelly said. "Some of these kids, I've heard from coaches, one coach had taught at a certain high school, I won't mention it, four of these kids (that) had gotten into sports were suicidal and they had told the coach, ‘If it wasn't for this, I was going to kill myself.’ But sports changed everything for them.”
At the July meeting, Kelly said quality coaches are not all the high schools need. They also need quality trainers, who can better handle serious injuries, like concussions.
During public comment at that meeting, Jeneé Littrell addressed Kelly’s statements regarding Black and Hispanic student athletes. She’s a former educator in the district and is running for a trustee seat this fall.
“Trustee Kelly singled out Black and Hispanic boys and used language that invoked stereotypes about their families, neighborhoods and futures,” Littrell said. “His remarks reduced students of color to a stereotype defined by absent fathers and poverty while suggesting that athletics may be their only pathway to a better life.”
Another concern flagged by teachers and people in public comment is how these pay raises were initially negotiated. Chris Emerick is the treasurer of the teachers’ union as well as a history teacher and former football coach in the district.
“Our biggest problem (is) that this was negotiated behind the union’s back,” Emerick said. “I believe coaches should get paid. But I've talked to teachers/coaches that are union members and they even feel that this has been bargained in bad faith.”
For Bryce Towne, this year's Grossmont High School’s boys varsity soccer coach, this significant investment he hopes will translate to stronger coaching staffs.
“I mean, partially for me, you know, stipend raise for me means hopefully I can hire better coaches,” Towne said. “It'll be nice to maybe be able to help out other coaches as well who deserve the money, because they work really hard for these kids.”
The district released the revised budget Wednesday and will hold a special public meeting to discuss it on Thursday.
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