Late last week, President of Kuemper Catholic Schools, John Steffes, released a statement, saying he and Superintendent of Carroll Community Schools, Dr. Casey Berlau, had met after the football season and worked out several different ways to cut Kuemper’s costs for use of the new stadium. Dr. Berlau says this meeting had been planned all along.
Several adjustments were made throughout the season to address costs, mainly custodial ones.
The rental policy remains the same, but Berlau says Kuemper is not a “typical” user, utilizing the stadium as much or more than Carroll Community School does. He adds they will continue to look at ways to streamline operations for savings and when the administration from both schools sits down to talk about these issues, there is no contention at all, merely a coming together to develop a resolution. Just a few weeks ago, representatives from Kuemper attended a Carroll City Council meeting, exploring the option of moving the girls’ softball program to field #7 at the city’s youth baseball/softball complex. Last week’s statement from Steffes included the announcement that softball will remain at the Carroll school district’s field. Berlau says a conversation similar to the stadium one also took place on this subject.
One of the solutions is to use the players to help with post-game cleanup, much like what is done with high school baseball at Merchants Park. Berlau adds this is a unique situation in his experience, mainly because Carroll is fortunate to have two school districts in a community of 10,000. At other schools, there are usually not many people, groups or organizations requesting use of sporting facilities.
