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Read the press release here.

New Sports League Formed in Wake of CPS Decision to Slash Elementary Sports

By Heather Cherone | August 5, 2015 5:34am | Updated on August 5, 2015 2:52pm

The Sauganash Flag Football Team celebrates winning the 2014 city championship. [Sauganash Elementary School}

UPDATE: CPS said Wednesday it will restore the elementary sports program, but schools will have to pay the coaches.

 

SAUGANASH — Sean Kennedy, the athletic director at Sauganash Elementary School, was devastated when Chicago Public Schools officials announced it would slash sports funding to bridge a massive budget gap.

Kennedy, a special education teacher, had just coached the Sauganash Elementary School Chiefs to the school's first-ever city championship in flag football, and other sports were taking root at the Far Northwest Side school.

"Sports are an important outlet for students," Kennedy said. "It brought the school together, and created a buzz."

But all that would have been lost because several weeks ago CPS officials announced they would eliminate funding for elementary school sports teams and stipends for 5,300 grade school coaches to save $3.2 million. The district faces a $1.1 billion budget deficit.

Then Kennedy read in DNAinfo Chicago that Taft High School's Local School Council had voted to give its 16 feeder elementary schools stipends of $1,000 and $1,500 to help preserve their sports programs.

"No one was really stepping up, so I took the reins," Kennedy said.

Heather Cherone says teams have helped bring schools together:

With the help of Taft Athletic Director Ryan Glowacz, the new Northside 20 league was born.

The league includes all of Taft's feeder schools, along with Disney II Magnet Elementary School, Peterson Elementary School and O.A. Thorp Scholastic Academy as well as the seventh- and eighth-grade Taft Academic Center, Kennedy said.

The schools will compete against each other in a number of sports, including co-ed flag football, girls volleyball, cross country and boys soccer in the fall, Kennedy said.

A meeting is set for next week to determine which teams will participate, and to assign a director for each sport, Kennedy said, adding that he hopes to have the league in place by the time school starts Sept. 8, so he and his fellow teachers can concentrate on their classes.

"We're doing this on our own time," Kennedy said.

If schools want to pay coaches the $1,200 stipend they got last year for overseeing the teams, they'll have to raise the money themselves.

Taft's contribution won't cover all of the costs of fielding teams, Kennedy said.

"It is not much, but it will help," Kennedy said.

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