December 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 20

FINANCE FOR THE FIELD
Joint Provision Partnerships with Schools
By John L. Crompton, Ph.D.

n 1898, several schools in New York City were opened as evening
recreation centers with leaders who were responsible for recreational
programming. This was the beginning of a long tradition of recreation agencies negotiating cooperative arrangements with school systems, authorizing the use of school facilities during afterschool hours.
However, these joint-use arrangements are limiting. They invariably
are negotiated after a school facility
is built, so the space was not purposefully designed for both school
and community use. Joint provision
is a superior alternative. Unlike
joint use, in the planning stages both
agencies have input into its designs,
negotiate details of their respective
roles in its management and operation, and agree to their funding
contributions to the project.

The Rationale for
Joint Provision
The standard specifications for
schools, especially junior high and
high schools, incorporate multi-

ple recreation elements that city
governments want to offer their
residents: sports fields, libraries,
theaters, art facilities, gymnasiums, weight training areas, swimming pools, craft studios, music
rooms and equipment, meeting
rooms for evening classes, vocational training labs, etc.
In terms of capital costs, probably 80 percent of the investment
in community recreation facilities
already has been made. Adapting these to facilitate community
access would require relatively
modest injections of capital and
would be much more cost effective than building facilities independent of schools.

Figure 1:

School
vacations

School semesters

Available for
community use

15 hours

9 hours

School priority

36 weeks
180 days
(weekdays)

Parks & Recreation

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72 days
(weekends)

16
weeks
112
days

In some communities, the real
problem in meeting recreational
needs could be resolved if future
schools and school extensions
were designed so their recreational components were purposefully
designed to accommodate community use.
The rationale for school districts and cities to jointly provide
these amenities is summarized in
Figure 1 below, which shows use
of the physical plant.
The section marked " School
Priority " shows that recreational facilities used exclusively by
a school represents a very small
proportion of their potential overall use (i.e., 180 days a year for a
limited number of hours each day).
Community-built recreational facilities are likely to be used extensively on weekends, in the evenings
and early mornings, and during
school vacations. Community facilities typically have much less
intensive use on weekdays during
the hours when people are at work
or school. Hence, the facility-use
requirements of a school district
and public recreation agency are
reasonably complementary.
The cost of a new high school
recently constructed in my community was $112 million. Figure
2 on page 19, shows that if school
and extra-curricular activities use
the plant from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for
180 school days, this represents
18 percent of the plant's potential
use. Would any business make
such a large capital investment in
a physical plant that it used for
only 18 percent of its capacity? If

December 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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