Student Travel Costs Added to Upper Moreland Budget

Whether it’s the varsity basketball team winning districts and advancing to the state tournament, or the band qualifying for a regional performance, success has a price.

One of the biggest differences in this year’s school budget is the addition of nearly $23,000 to the Non-Instructional Student Services, which includes travel costs for student-athletes, officials, band members, the chess team, etc.

The School Board has put $75,260 into this department, up 43-percent from last year.

“We’ve had a phenomenal year,” Business Manager Michael Braun said. “We’ve had a great cast of things happening. Because of that, the costs have gone up.”

This fund includes the payment of officials, but most of the money will pertain to travel expenses. Many people will look to the sports team when they think of district and state tournaments, but Upper Moreland has had a successful campaign in many other fields.

“When kids go to a music conference in Erie because they were selected to All-State, we need to get them there,” Upper Moreland Superintendent Robert Milrod said. “We’re having more kids excel at those levels. We have kids going to the All Northeastern Band, that’s in Connecticut. We have to send them there. When we have kids who go to states for diving competitions, or for track, or other sports, we need to get them there.”

Students will travel a good hour or two to regional events to compete against other area schools. Busses are included in these costs.

“We haven’t properly budgeted for that in years past and we’ve had to put money in other areas,” Milrod said. “We recognized this is something we wanted to establish a base budget. We want to make sure we have that money in our budget. The last thing we want to do is tell a kid, ‘you made it to states, but you can’t go’”. Milrod said.