For Sale: Your Local School

Who knew it cost $10,000 to put a name on a public high school stadium? None of the local stories I saw on this recent naming of Churchill High School's stadium mentioned a price tag. But this is MCPS!

It took a South Carolina news article on the naming of the Winston Churchill High School stadium in Potomac to spill the truth. So who got the $10,000 - what pot did that go into?

Oh, sure any payments for the naming of a facility are prohibited without the approval of the Board of Education under Board Policy FFA. But who pays attention to Board Policy?

"Petitions received to name a portion of a school facility to generate financial gain are
prohibited unless expressly approved by the Board of Education."

If anyone can track down Board of Education minutes approving a $10,000 payment to (unknown) for the naming of the Churchill High School stadium, please post in the comments to this article. Thanks. It appears that the Churchill committee set up in the summer of 2008 to "select a name" for the stadium was a farce, as the fund raising to "pay" for these names had already been going on for years.

The naming decision took place during the summer of 2008. At that time the Board of Education was run by President Nancy Navarro, with Vice-President Shirley Brandman, and members were Steve Abrams, Christopher Barclay, Sharon Cox, Dr. Judy Docca, Patricia O'Neill, and Benjamin Moskowitz (student) or Quratul-Ann Malik (student).

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From the Aiken Standard news:

Aiken resident gets his name on stadium at former school
11/17/2008 11:47 PM
By SUZANNE R. STONE Staff writer

Aiken resident Fred Shepherd's former students - and their children - have a little something to remember him by. Shepherd spent 27 years as a teacher and football coach at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Md., before retiring in 1997. This year, the school renamed its stadium to Shepherd Stadium in his honor... ...The drive to rename the stadium began four years ago, under the direction of Churchill teacher Don Higgins, who formed a committee to work on the project. The committee was informed it would have to raise the $10,000 for the name change themselves, which took several years to raise from former players and their parents."

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