Canyon Creek School has decided to eliminate all extra-curricular activities for students because of budget concerns.
It's a move that not only has parents frustrated, but some are thinking about pulling their kids out of the district all together.
That board decision means no more field trips and sports so students can no longer participate in basketball, volleyball, and cross country.
Some families are concerned and showed up to the board meeting on Thursday night and their only option may be to transfer schools.
Canyon Creek School will no longer compete in girls basketball during the upcoming school year.
"I just enjoy all my sports," said Grace Swanson, a student-athlete at Canyon Creek. "And that hurts a lot that they're getting taken away. It's really sad because all my friends are leaving."
Swanson is going into the sixth grade and says some of her friends have already made the decision to transfer so they can play sports.
"We either need to do club sports, which is expensive, or transfer out of the district and pay the tuition fee plus the taxes," said Bobbie Swanson, Grace's mother.
In June, the school board voted, 4-0, to cut about $117,000 from its $1.8 million budget.
Almost half of that cut is for two full-time teachers.
And about $18,000 impacts extracurricular activities including boys and girls basketball and cross country, girls volleyball, a football co-op with Elder Grove and Elysian, and field trips.
"If you didn't attend the meeting, you would not know there's no sports," said Bobbie Swanson. "But during a board meeting, there was a budget cut topic and that budget cut was to eliminate any extra curricular activities."
"We haven't even really actually been made publicly aware by a letter or anything of sorts," said Maranda Yeager, a Canyon Creek parent. "It's been word of mouth that somebody knew and confirmed with somebody inside the school."
Superintendent Brent Lipp said information about dropping sports has been put out on Facebook, other social media, the website.
"We will put out an article in August in our newsletter explaining everything that's changed for this this new school year," Lipp said.
Board Chair Carl Siroky and Lipp say the board has had to make cuts for a few years and there were not a lot of other avenues to take.
"It is our responsibility," said Lipp. "It's the board's responsibility to have a fiscally sound budget and balanced and this is the these are the cuts that we had to make to balance it."
Some parents disagree saying something besides extracurricular and sports could have been cut.
"There was no discussion," said Bobbie Swanson. "It was, this is the decision. Sorry, we didn't pass the levy. I feel like be they're punishing the families and the students for not passing the mill levy. It's not their fault. They're not old enough to vote."
Swanson said she voted for the mill levy.
"If you look at the numbers of people who voted yes, that's about a little more than the population of the school," Swanson said. "And so us parents wanted it but we have low income families. People who are strapped and so they're tight on money. And they just they didn't pass but I don't think that children should be punished. There's other ways to cut budgets than to take away sports and activities."
"It was never something that said yes, this is going to happen if the mill levy doesn't pass," said Yeager. "And it almost felt like a threat."
That $134,138.27 mill levy failed in May.
The superintendent says the board has been transparent about the mill levy and the cancellation of extracurricular activities.
"There's nothing retaliatory about it," Lipp said. "In fact, we would probably never want it to make that decision, but we had to. We can't really afford to cut any more staff without hurting the academics, so activities was our next option.
Parents say for some families, without school sports, there may not be an opportunity to play and prepare for high school competition.
"It's really unfair to the kids," said Yeager. "You're putting them so far behind when they transfer into West High or transfer to Laurel in high school. They've never been given these four years to grow and learn from the activities. They're being taken away. And there's no chance of them being able to participate in high school."
"At some point, I feel it'll be back," Lipp said. "We just have to get our budget in a better place."
