Community Use Isn't Free: Trent Allen and Cheryl Galloway Join the Stretched Podcast

Public schools are more than places of instruction. Their gyms, fields, theaters, classrooms and other spaces are important community assets, supporting everything from youth sports and enrichment programs to civic organizations and community events.

Opening those spaces to the public can create enormous community value. But it also raises a fundamental question that too often goes unanswered:

What does community use of a school facility actually cost?

Facilitron's Trent Allen and Cheryl Galloway recently joined the Stretched podcast to explore that question and why answering it is becoming increasingly important for school districts across the country.

Hosted by David Sturtz of Sturtz & Company and Mary Filardo of the 21st Century School Fund and the National Center on School Infrastructure (NCSI), Stretched examines the challenges and opportunities involved in designing, operating and sustaining America's public school facilities.

In Episode 16, "Community Use: Counting and Sharing the Costs," Trent and Cheryl discuss the often-overlooked financial realities of opening public school facilities to community users and what districts can do to create more sustainable community-use programs.

Every Hour of Facility Use Has a Cost

A gym may already be built. A field may already be maintained. A theater may appear to be sitting unused after the school day ends.

But that doesn't mean using those spaces is free.

Community use can generate additional custodial needs, utilities, security and staffing costs. It contributes to maintenance requirements and wear on buildings, fields and equipment. Over time, that use also contributes to the lifecycle and eventual replacement costs of public assets.

The challenge is that many districts don't have the data or systems necessary to connect those costs with actual facility utilization.

When those costs aren't identified and appropriately recovered, they don't disappear. Instead, they may ultimately be absorbed by district operating budgets - the same resources districts depend on to fulfill their educational mission.

That's why cost recovery isn't simply a conversation about rental rates. It's a conversation about responsible stewardship.

Moving From Assumptions to Data

For years, Facilitron has worked with school districts to better understand not only who is using their facilities, but how much those facilities are being used and what that use costs.

That distinction matters.

A sustainable community-use program begins with good information: accurate schedules, utilization data, operating expenses, support-service costs and consistent records of internal and external use.

With that information, districts can begin answering questions that otherwise become matters of assumption:

What does it cost per hour to operate different facility types? How much community use is occurring? Which costs are being recovered and which are being subsidized? Are fees grounded in actual operating costs? Are policies being applied consistently across schools and user groups?

Those answers give district leaders a much stronger foundation for policy decisions.

Facilitron's approach to cost analysis pairs operational cost information with facility utilization data to help districts calculate the cost of operating different types of spaces. The objective isn't simply to increase fees. It's to give school boards and administrators better information for determining what their policies and rates should be.

Good Governance Makes Community Access Sustainable

The conversation on Stretched also goes beyond dollars and cents.

Trent and Cheryl discuss the Facility Use Governance Framework and the thinking behind a National Model Policy for Community Use of School Spaces, work shaped by years of seeing districts navigate outdated policies, inconsistent practices and exceptions that can make community-use programs difficult to administer fairly.

This isn't a new challenge.

Research into joint use of public schools has long recognized both the tremendous benefits of community access and the need for stronger governance, administrative systems and sustainable funding. Earlier policy work from the 21st Century School Fund and Center for Cities & Schools identified public transparency and understanding the full cost of ownership as critical components of sustainable community use.

The principle remains important today: access and sustainability aren't competing goals.

In fact, one helps make the other possible.

When districts understand their costs, establish clear policies, apply those policies consistently and provide transparency around access and fees, they create a stronger foundation for sharing public facilities over the long term.

Protecting Community Assets for the Future

School facilities represent an enormous public investment. Communities understandably want those spaces to be active, accessible and useful beyond the school day.

The goal shouldn't be to discourage that use.

The goal should be to make it sustainable.

That means creating programs that welcome community organizations while recognizing the real cost of operating and maintaining the facilities they use. It means treating community groups equitably, rather than relying on inconsistent exceptions or historical arrangements. And it means giving district leaders the data they need to make informed decisions about some of their most valuable public assets.

As operating costs rise and school facilities age, these questions will only become more important.

We're grateful to Jeff Vincent, David Sturtz, Mary Filardo and the Stretched team for creating a forum for this conversation, and we're proud to have Trent and Cheryl contribute Facilitron's perspective to an important national discussion about the future of community use.

Listen to Stretched, Episode 16: "Community Use: Counting and Sharing the Costs."