WEST NEWBURY — The Pentucket School Committee upheld its decision to have the superintendent negotiate with the owner of a popular summer camp over use of the high school tennis courts. But Pete Kolifrath, owner of Community Tennis LLC, said talks with Superintendent Paul Livingston have broken down.
Kolifrath presented a new proposal for the multi-week camp to the school board last Tuesday, asking them to review it themselves rather than have him work through Livingston.
"The superintendent and I have had a number of discussions, to no avail," said Kolifrath.
However, after talking about the issue for more than a half hour, the board decided to uphold a previous vote that gave the superintendent the authorization to determine facility usage, as long as all private summer camps were treated similarly in accordance with the new district usage policy adopted last spring.
The policy offers a tiered approach, with nonprofit organizations directly affiliated with the schools paying the least and private businesses being charged the most.
At the end of the discussion, Kolifrath repeatedly pressed for more time to make his case, despite being asked not to by School Committee Chairwoman Kathy Kastrinelis. Noting the late hour and the committee's full agenda, Kastrinelis eventually had to cut his comments short.
"You've demonstrated that you are not willing to be civil. I'm ruling you out of order," said Kastrinelis, with a bang of her gavel.
In previous years, Kolifrath has successfully run his private tennis camp on the high school courts. He says he has been trying since last September to negotiate a way to allow his camp to continue, but Livingston's commitment to the new fee structure is making it impossible.
"I would love to have Coach Pete's camp," the superintendent responded. In an attempt to compromise, he offered Kolifrath a $1,000-per-week salary to run the camp through Pentucket's Community Education program, but was told the coach would accept no less than $3,000 per week.
"I just felt that wasn't reasonable," Livingston said.
Kolifrath's latest proposal would reduce the number of weeks the camp ran from eight to six. He would utilize four courts between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon, leaving one court free for public use.
Students would have access to the restrooms in the school, but no other indoor facilities would be utilized. In his original plan the coach had requested use of the gym and a classroom in case of inclement weather, but balked when the superintendent indicated that in order to ensure the space and custodial help would be available, the camp would need to include a fee for reserving those spaces every day. Total cost to the camp for the original proposal was $15,840.
In his new proposal, Kolifrath estimated $1,350 to rent the courts for the 90 hours the camp would run and $1,350 for custodial services at a rate of $30 per hour. Total cost under this scenario would be $2,700, he said.
The Merrimac resident stressed that there were "hundreds of families" who want his camp to remain local, but without a reconsideration of the fee schedule, he would have to take it outside the district.
Pentucket's Heather Conner questioned Kolifrath's math, saying he accounted for rental of only one court in his proposal, not the four he said he needed. The actual number for court rental would be $5,400, bringing the total fee to $6,750, she noted.
Currently only one private camp has applied for facility usage this summer, Livingston said.
Two summer programs directly affiliated with the schools are also running — a computer camp run through Community Ed, and SummerBlast, the community arts program in July sponsored by The Pentucket Fine and Performing Arts Foundation, which raises revenues to support arts education throughout the district.
