By Pete Bosak <\/p>\n
BELLEFONTE — The Bellefonte Area school board late Tuesday evening voted to put plans for a wrestling-only room back into a $32 million renovation planned for the high school.<\/p>\n
As a cost-cutting measure, the wrestlers faced losing not only the proposed wrestling room for the renovated and expanded high school, but also their current one — drawing a large crowd to the meeting Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Under heavy pressure from nearly 80 parents, coaches and wrestlers, the board re-instituted plans to build a new, 4,200-square-foot wrestling room for practices. Wearing team colors and Bellefonte wrestling T-shirts, those addressing the board said cutting a dedicated wrestling area from renovation plans would spell doom for the proud program.<\/p>\n
“This is a death sentence to the wrestling program, “argued Bellefonte Wrestling Association President David Jones. “It may take two or three years, but no program can exist under these conditions. If a new wrestling room cannot be included in the plans, we would ask, at a minimum, to keep the existing wrestling room.”<\/p>\n
The audience found a friend in board member Rodney Musser, a former wrestler himself.<\/p>\n
“All of the schools we compete with have a wrestling room, “Musser said. “We need to be brought up to speed.”<\/p>\n
Board member George Stone also urged the board to reconsider its plans for the wrestling room, saying the district is planning a multi-million dollar expansion and should do it right.<\/p>\n
“I’m fearful, in the end, we are not going to be happy with what we build up there, “Stone said. “We don’t have appropriate athletic facilities.”<\/p>\n
The wrestling room nearly fell onto the chopping block as administrators struggle to hold down costs of the much-needed renovations to the high school. Superintendent James Masullo Jr. said school directors are fearful of over-taxing district property owners to pay for renovations. The board passed a 2005-06 budget Tuesday night calling for a 3.7 percent property tax increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Pete Bosak BELLEFONTE — The Bellefonte Area school board late Tuesday evening voted to put plans for a wrestling-only room back into a $32 million renovation planned for the high school. As a cost-cutting measure, the wrestlers faced losing not only the proposed wrestling room for the renovated and expanded high school, but also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-kF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}