The Red Oak school board voted Wednesday to pay athletic contest officials out of the general fund for the 2026–27 school year

The Red Oak school board voted Wednesday to pay athletic contest officials out of the general fund for the 2026–27 school year.

 

 

The Red Oak school board voted Wednesday to pay athletic contest officials out of the general fund for the 2026–27 school year. The Department of Education allows it if the board is explicit. The board was explicit. Officials still have to be paid.

That was the short-term motion. The discussion underneath it is the one Lorenz said is not finished.

“Our district activity fund is significantly depleted,” he told KCSI, “and I think that’s a polite way of putting it.” Revenues are not covering program expenses. “We are spending more than we’re taking in.”

He walked the board through how they got here. In 2018 the district received a $106,000 gift from the estate of Michael Logan, restricted to activities. It was a godsend. For about seven years the district used that one-time money as an annual subsidy of more than $15,000. The gift is gone. On top of that, moving into the Western Iowa Conference costs the activity fund another $11,000 to $12,000 in junior high gate receipts, because the WIC does not run JH admission the old way. Lorenz overstated the gate number in the meeting, then corrected it from his notes on the air. Combined, he called it a funding gap of about $26,000.

Paying officials from the general fund is not, he said, a green light to keep spending like the Logan money is still in the account. General-fund dollars are the same dollars that pay salaries. They come out of the classroom side.

“It’s not a simple solution, but it’s a pretty simple concept,” Lorenz said. “You either have to raise revenues, or you have to cut expenses.”

Everybody can agree on the bottom line. The fight starts when the cut is someone else’s program. Aaron put it the way board rooms always put it: cut everyone else’s, but not mine. Lorenz said that was the meeting.

He is not announcing program cuts. He is announcing that there is no room left for what he called frivolous spending or luxuries, and that every dollar gets a hard look. Administration will start the revenue-and-cut conversations. The board wants in. Lorenz said a work session with actual numbers is next. Directors asked for the hard data on what the activity fund really looks like.

WIC superintendents had a preliminary version of the same talk the same day. That told Lorenz Red Oak is not lonely. It did not give him a solution.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “you can only pay for what you have money to pay for.