Critics say palatial athletic facilities prioritize sports over the classroom and waste taxpayer money. But supporters say they are a source of pride and promotional value for a region, and an important resource that can be used for school and community activities. Stadiums also generate revenue from advertising, naming rights, booster fundraising and television deals.

The most publicized—the $60 million Eagle Stadium at Allen High School in Allen ISD near Dallas—earns about $1.5 million each year from its consistently undefeated team, which packs all 18,000 seats for most games.

And at many stadiums nationwide, most of the money generated from sports goes back into the school’s general fund or supports other extracurricular activities, says Tom Canby, associate executive director of government relations for the Texas Association of School Business Officials.

“Districts are looking for any funding source possible” Canby says. “There are very few districts where sports pay for themselves, but today they can create more revenue.”

Communities back big stadiums

Football—particularly in Texas—is likely to have the most detractors because it has a reputation there for exorbitant spending, says Roger Abrams, a law professor and expert on sports law and author of the book Playing Tough: The World of Sports and Politics.

“You and I would not be talking about this if the school district was spending millions for a new science building” he says. “It’s a story because it is about sports. The community supports it, and if they want to spend $60 million on a stadium, it is really up to them.”

That’s what happened seven years ago, when voters approved Eagle Stadium in Allen, which also includes a state-of-the art video scoreboard. The stadium, paid for with a $120 million bond that also helped build a $30 million performing arts center, a bus depot and food storage facility, is also used for PE classes, wrestling matches and golf team practice, says Tim Carroll, an Allen ISD spokesperson.

Nearly 100 students work at its 32 concession lines, and more than 80 percent of the high school student body attends games. The school’s football team has been the state champions 2011 to 2014 and has an 800-member marching band.

And, Carroll says, it anchors a community that has doubled in size in a decade, has family income twice the national average and loves football. The school sells out the roughly 8,300 season tickets every year at $40 each, he adds.

Revenue from the stadium—around $1.5 million—goes into the general fund to help pay expenses for football and other sports, Carroll says. Revenue includes $450,000 from four large concession stands (the previous stadium netted $70,000), $330,000 from season-ticket sales, and around $400,000 from ticket sales.

The district chose not to sell naming rights, but it gets $15,000 to $35,000 from sponsors for advertising space, season tickets, mentions in PA announcements and “roaming rights” to distribute promotional material.

About seven miles north of Allen, a more expensive stadium is under construction at McKinney ISD after voters in May approved a $220 million multipurpose construction bond. The 12,000-seat facility will replace a 7,000-seat stadium that was built in 1962 for one school and is now shared by three high schools.

Meanwhile, Katy ISD in the Houston suburbs, where school enrollment has doubled since 2010, is building a $62 million facility with 12,000 seats that will be used by seven high schools. The original stadium, built in 1982, seats 10,000.

What’s in a name?

After ticket sales, the most common sources of revenue are advertising and sponsorships, which can reach $150,000 a year, says Jeff Bertoni, president of sales for Market Street Sports Group, which sets up such business opportunities for districts.

And stadium naming rights can be even more lucrative. That trend has migrated from professional sports to college, and now hundreds of high schools are getting in on the action, says Josh Boyd, a professor at Purdue University who specializes in corporate sponsorships.

Such agreements have brought $50,000 to $250,000 to districts.

For instance, over the past 10 years, Gloucester High School in Massachusetts has made $500,000 from New Balance for combining the original stadium’s name with the shoe company’s: It’s called the New Balance Track and Field at Newell Stadium. New Balance’s deal with Gloucester High School provided $50,000 over 10 years to repair a deteriorating stadium.

A local car dealer has naming rights in at least one Texas stadium. New Caney ISD sold naming rights for $60,000 per year until 2019 to help offset the cost of its new $20 million stadium.

And in New Hampshire, Laconia High School supporters raised $1 million with donations toward its $16 million football stadium and renovations to the high school. About $250,000 of it came from Bank of New Hampshire for naming rights.

“Only a very few, highly successful football programs with large seating capacities and proactive corporate partnership arrangements could even come close to paying for themselves,” says David Pierce, a Indiana University professor of sports management who wrote a detailed study of high school sports funding. He says football is the sport most likely to earn what it spends.

Scoring with screen time

Other schools have smaller budgets for facilities and fewer revenue streams. Whittier Union High School District in California opened two new stadiums recently, each costing about $19 million. “It was not part of our equation to bring in income from this facility” says Superintendent Martin Plourde. “But our community has considered it an excellent investment.”

The board preferred to name both fields after administrators and rejected advertising because it might have meant allowing ads with messages contrary to what school officials or parents find acceptable, Plourde says.

Other districts promote advertising openly. Rock Hill School District in South Carolina offers $3,500 for a founding partnership and $1,500 for a premier partnership that include advertising throughout the stadium, a presentation during the coin toss at the start of a game, and promotional opportunities at other school activities.

At some of the newest stadiums, advertising is displayed on high-tech video scoreboards, which are quickly gaining popularity, says Mike Daniel, president and CEO of Sportable Scoreboards.

“It’s a trickle-down from professional and college teams” Daniel says. “The kids are getting the equipment that the professionals have now, and they and their parents expect the scoreboard to keep pace, too.”

To help high schools pay for scoreboards, which he says cost about $45,000, the company will install one and take a portion of the advertising revenue or will lease the equipment to the district.

Daktronics, another large scoreboard manufacturer, estimates that schools earn an average of $200,000 with new technology that allows for video advertising on the larger, constantly changing screen.

Meanwhile, television broadcast deals can be another source of revenue for schools, says David Rudolph, CEO of PlayOn Sports, which broadcasts more than 30,000 high school games each year. Broadcasts have grown 35 percent in the last two years.

PlayOn contracts for media rights with state athletic associations, who then pay schools with the most broadcasts up to $7,000 a year. They also contract directly wit

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Classic detention, where bored students sit silently and unproductively in classrooms after school, has limited value as a disciplinary tool, says Alan Johnson, superintendent of the Woodland Hills School District near Pittsburgh.

“Detention quite literally becomes something that we can do to demonstrate that a code of conduct is being enforced” Johnson says. “As for effectiveness, few principals have any expectation of that.”

African-American and special education students face disproportionate rates of exclusionary punishment, such as detention, according to a 2012 study, “Breaking School Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement.”

It followed all Texas seventh-graders in 2001, 2012 and 2013, revealing that students in detention were much more likely to be held back, drop out and be involved in a crime. It also found that use of detention varied widely, even among schools with similar demographics, and that detention did not improve academic performance.

School leaders are finding that changing how detention works may improve outcomes—as will broader, proactive disciplinary approaches that can reveal strained relationships with teachers or may identify underlying problems with students’ emotional health, academic skills and home life.

Students reflect, teachers coach

91¿´Æ¬istrators may feel they have few remedies other than detention or in-school suspension for serious infractions—such as a fight—involving student safety. And detention (or the threat of it) can change the behavior of some students for the better—as long as it is paired with an adult’s care and attention.

For instance, at Flathead High School in the Kalispell Public School District in Montana, some teachers serve as “personal academic trainers” during detention. They gather students for small study hall sessions or mentor each student separately on subjects that they need help with, says Peter Fusaro, Flathead High principal and president of the Montana Association of Secondary School Principals.

And at West Port High School in Marion County Public Schools in Florida, students who are disciplined must reflect on their actions by writing about what prompted their behavior, its consequences and how it could have been avoided, Principal Jayne Ellspermann says.

“When students make poor choices, the most important thing we can do is help them not make the same choice in the future” says Ellspermann, also president-elect of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.”If time out of the classroom or after school is paired with reflection, it can make a difference.”

At Benjamin Banneker Middle School in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, students who have misbehaved or need help with classwork are required to visit that teacher’s classroom during lunch period for coaching and tutoring.

This is a big deterrent for most students because they miss out on social time with friends at lunch. Richard Curwin, author of the book Discipline with Dignity, believes detention should be assigned only if a teacher is available to help the student one-on-one with class work.

Rewarding good behavior

Alternatives to detention generally involve a different philosophy about improper behavior and the students who exhibit it. But new approaches are sometimes difficult to implement. “They may require a lot in terms of budgets, staffing and time as opposed to simply writing a pass that says ‘be here at 3 o’clock,'” says Bryan Joffe, project director for education and youth development at the American Superintendents Association.

But for districts willing to invest the resources, the new approaches show promise. Some of these new models are based on relationship building and social-emotional learning. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, also known as PBIS, is an increasingly popular approach that emphasizes curbing bad behavior by rewarding good behavior.

When students misbehave at PBIS schools, the staff strives to keep the problem from escalating or interrupting instruction. Then they work to discover why the student was disruptive. Finally, they set behavior goals for the student, develop progress reports teachers can use, offer counseling or develop other specific guidance, and evaluate results, according to The Center on Response to Intervention at the American Institutes of Research.

Another approach is to focus on good behavior. Several schools in the Rapides Parish School District in Louisiana have developed “economies” in which fake money is given to students who follow rules or help others. The students’ earnings can “buy” extra treats at lunch or admission to special activities.

And Lowery Elementary School in the Ascension Public Schools in Louisiana reduced behavior issues by nearly 30 percent in one year using an application called Kickboard, which collects key data about behavior. The program allows teachers to report and track good behavior so top performers can be acknowledged on a “leader board” display or during morning announcements.

The system also reports which students have misbehaved so teachers can intervene earlier to solve problems. The data identifies which or groups that are repeatedly causing trouble and can then be used to develop personalized behavior plans.

Restorative justice

Another approach that has shown promise—restorative justice—brings teachers and students together to discuss specific incidents of bad behavior, analyze the consequences and find solutions.

For instance, in earlier grades a student might explain to classmates how bullying causes anxiety in the victims. In middle or high school, an entire class may talk about how instruction was disrupted by a student’s disrespectful behavior toward a teacher. In either case, victims describe how the event made them feel and the accused has an opportunity to reply.

After it was implemented two years ago in Racine USD in Wisconsin, fewer behavior incidents were reported, says Deputy Superintendent Eric Gallien.

Racine schools have also seen improved behavior after implementing programs—including Violence Free Zones (VFZ)—that in part teach students social-emotional skills. VFZ staff members intervene when students get into a fight, for example, and then talk about ways such students could have better handled their emotions. Suspensions have plummeted under the program.

At Pottstown High School in Pennsylvania, fighting incidents were cut in half and assignments to detention dropped from 168 to 37 over a two-year period, says Stephen Rodriguez, who was principal of the school when the program was implemented. “In a school actively using restorative practices, there is a reduction of all types of discipline issues” he says.

In Portland Public District in Oregon, 95 percent of cases handled through restorative justice ended in an agreement between both sides and annual suspensions fell by more than 100 in a year.

In the Lansing School District in Michigan, the program resolved nearly all of the 522 cases presented over four years, avoiding 1,600 days of suspension.

Outside counseling

With some school counselors responsible for up to 1,000 students, some districts have sought assistance from outside agencies.

For example, Minneapolis Public Schools developed a program called School Based Mental Health in seven schools. Therapists from outside agencies assessed nearly 150 students for mental health problems and arranged for therapy from outside counseling services.

And staff members were offered educational programs on such topics as attention deficit and adolescent brain development.

However it’s done, finding constructive alternatives to traditional detention for troubled students is imperative for all school leaders, says Curwin, the author.

“Every educator must decide how much energy to invest in chronically disruptive students,” Curwin says. “However, we know that those we don’t reach are at a much higher risk of committing crimes or otherwise being drains on society. So although they take more time and creativity, reaching and influencing them is immensely important.”

James Paterson is a freelance writer in Delaware.

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