The Dike-New Hartford School District is accepting donations for a project that’ll extend the football shed to create a meeting space for the athletic department.
The coaches meeting room will offer a meeting space, offices for coaches who don’t have official district offices, modern amenities including projectors and whiteboards, and heating and cooling for year-round use. Superintendent Justin Stockdale says the project was kickstarted by a generous donation.
“This is one of those nice-to-have things, it’s not necessarily something we had to have,” Stockdale says. “And a few of our head coaches came to me with the idea last year. And I said, ‘Well, I think I can get on board with it, but I think we’re gonna need some contributions to do it.’ I just didn’t feel right going down the path of having the school district fully fund this, again, a nice-to-have thing, but do you really need it?”
“We had an individual step up and just basically said, ‘Hey, I’ve got X amount I’d like to contribute to the district this year, what needs do you have?’ And I ran by a whole list of things that I thought might appeal to this individual. And they said, ‘You know what? That coaches room sounds interesting to me, tell me more about it.’ So we talked about it and he said, ‘You know what? I’d like to pledge $10,000 towards it.'”
The initial donation happened before the district began publicly seeking funds, and Stockdale says the goal of $25,000 is within reach because of a generous community.
“In less than 10 days, we’re pretty darn close to having that knocked out. I’m not prepared yet to announce who those people are, but I’ll just tell you, when we go and put a rallying cry out for some nice-to-have things like this, our community 100 percent of the time steps up and knocks it out for us. I can’t thank these people enough. More to come on who these donors are and how we’re making it happen.”
Donations can be made to Business Manager Kayla Sabbah.
Interview with Justin Stockdale:
