SAD 3 cuts funds for community football club

THORNDIKE – The SAD 3 board decided Monday to not fund a community football club.

After voting in late April to contribute $17,000 to the football club, whose members are limited to Mount View students, Superintendent Barbara Rado Mosseau sought the advice of the district’s lawyer. The attorney recommended the district take on full sponsorship of the team, including screening and hiring coaches and paying for insurance, or let the group remain a private club, and not fund it.

At a meeting Monday night, a motion to make the club a school-sponsored activity failed in a 5-4 vote, Mosseau said Tuesday. The board then voted 7-1 to rescind the April vote in which the $17,000 funding was approved.

In between the first motion and the second, board member Karen Carlson left the meeting, Mosseau said.

The funding cut came too late to remove the money from the proposed SAD 3 budget, which voters faced in Tuesday’s referendum, the superintendent said. If the budget is approved at the polls, the $17,000 will be raised in a carry-over account, she said.

Even if the board had approved making the football club a school-sponsored activity, it probably would not have become a varsity team until 2009.