CLAREMONT — The Stevens High School Alumni Association has received about $200,000 in donations to help offset recent budget cuts affecting all extracurricular activities.
The cuts to activities came as part of the district’s efforts to address a $5 million deficit. Alumni association President Dick Girard estimated there have been more than 100 donors, including businesses, organizations and individuals.
“Money is coming from all over, not just Claremont,” Girard said in a phone interview Monday. “We’ve gotten donations from other school districts.”
The district has received 25 separate donations of money, gift cards and supplies from businesses, organizations and individuals specifically for programs at the tech center, with cash and gift cards totaling more than $26,000.
Half of the $200,000 has come from the Claremont Savings Bank, Girard said.
The bank announced Monday it was donating $100,000 to the district’s elementary, middle and high schools and the technical center “to support sports, music, art, theater, clubs and extracurricular activities.”
The Alumni Association has full authority over all donations and disbursements, ensuring it is spent where designated if donor’s wish to support a specific activity.
“They can send the money and designate it for whichever school and whichever activity they would like it to go (to),” Girard said. “We have a category for sports and they can break it down from there — football, basketball, baseball, whatever. We have another category for band.”
Of the $100,000 the bank donated, $64,000 is designated for the high school, of which $45,000 is for sports, $4,000 for clubs, extra curricular and stipends; $8,000 for music and $7,000 for theater.
The middle school will receive $17,000 for sports and music, theater, arts and extracurricular programs, and the elementary schools are to receive $19,000 for music and the tech center $10,000.
Some donations do not have designations, and in those cases, the money is put into a general fund and used as needed.
The alumni association has created a separate bank account for the donations, and every two weeks, a spreadsheet is created for each school and distributed to the principals.
“They will know exactly what has been donated and what it has been designated for,” said Girard, a 1961 Stevens graduate. “So they get a running total of where they stand.”
Gift cards from retailers such as Harbor Freight, Home Depot and LaValley’s Building Supply have been sent to support the building trades or plumbing and heating trades at the Sugar River Valley Technical Center. Other donations have gone to culinary arts and the medical assistant program.
“We had a $12,000 donation for the culinary arts program at the technical center from North Country Smokehouse,” Girard said.
The alumni association sends money to the elementary schools to help with supplies for art or whatever the school needs, Girard said. And payments can be made to vendors when principals submit invoices.
The community fundraising comes in response to concerns that there would be no sports at the high school or middle school this year after the School Board approved $500,000 worth of cuts to extracurricular activity funding in late August.
While the district did have enough money to start the fall season, there was concern about whether a full year of athletics could happen. That spurred the Alumni Association to step forward to collect donations for sports and other activities.
Though it is far too early to be certain, Girard said he hopes that enough money can be raised to match the $500,000 cut by the district.
The School Board is meeting Wednesday night and will provide further details on how it plans to address the deficit. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Sugar River Tech Center.
Donations to the Alumni Association can be sent in by mail or online. For details on how to contribute, visit https://stevensalumninh.com/.