By Eli Pace

The Hoptown Hoppers will call Hopkinsville High School home this summer.

The Christian County Board of Education unanimously approved a contract Thursday night with the Hoppers. The contract waives the custodial fee for the baseball team under the assumption the Hopkinsville High School baseball team boosters club, which will sell concessions at the game, will be in charge of cleanup after the games.

“I just want to say, on behalf of the Hoptown Hoppers, thank you guys for once again partnering with us to provide a playing facility,” said Carter Hendricks, team president. “Last year was a fantastic success, and this year the Hoppers are once again committed to hopefully growing that impact and making this a win for everybody involved.”

After going 28-12 in the regular season, the Hoppers won the Ohio Valley Summer Baseball League championship last year while playing their home games at Christian County High School.

The OVL is a wooden-bat league that gives college players a chance to fine tune their skills over the summer.

The Hoppers led the league last year in attendance, often drawing 300 to 400 fans to their home games.

The district’s Chief Operations Officer Kathy Hancock said Title IX, a federal law that mandates equality in opportunities for students, played a major role in moving the Hoppers from CCHS to HHS.

Because the boosters club for Christian County baseball team benefitted from selling concessions at Hoppers games last year, it would have run afoul of Title IX had the Hopkinsville High School baseball team’s boosters club not gotten the same opportunity this year, Hancock said.

“That Title IX piece is a very important piece because that’s part of the regulations we have to operate under and meet those,” Hancock told the board. “Title IX does play a very important part of what we do and the equity we provide among all of our students and all of our extracurricular activities. We think about that normally just with sports, but we have to look at that with other avenues as well.”

Hancock added that, if the Hoppers continue to use school facilities, the district will have to allow boosters clubs for other sports to run the concessions.

“I would say the logical sport we would move to next year would be softball,” Hancock said.

Hancock said the district could have kept the games at Christian County High School and let the HHS Boosters Club sell concessions there to satisfy Title IX requirements, but the district wanted to keep each boosters club in its own facilities.

Under the contract, the Hoppers will pay a fee of $250 per game to use the field, which is inline with the district’s policy for using its facilities. The Hoppers are slated to play 23 of their 45 games this year at home, so altogether the team will have to pony up $5,750 to use the field.

Before the board approved the contract, board member Linda Keller asked Hancock if renovations to the facilities at the baseball field will be complete by the time the Hoppers throw the first pitch.

“Those facilities will be ready when the season begins,” Hancock replied.

 In other business:

 
Board member Linda Killer gave the rest of the school board an update on the progress of the Local Planning Committee. A member of the committee, Keller said they have held two of the committee’s three public forums. “We’ve already gone over the assessment part of it, the financial numbers,” Keller said. “We’ve gone over instruction, technology, transportation, test scores and now we’re into the meat of it. We’re into the facility assessments.”

The committee will meet again Jan 28.

 The board heard about the most recent Measured Academic Progress assessment for reading, math and language (optional) in grades K-11. A fall to winter comparison showed that, in the fall assessment, 13 schools had grade levels that performed above the normative mean while, in the winter assessment, 10 schools performed above the normative mean.

Tracey Leath, district assessment coordinator, said they tested students fairly early in the winter assessment and it was possible that played a role in the results. She said she is looking forward to seeing the next round of MAP data. The district keeps track of the MAP assessments because they are used to help predict students’ performance on the K-PREP test.

 A handful of board members were appointed to serve on various committees, including Barry Cornelius, Calendar Committee; Linda Killer, Parent and Public Participation Committee; and Sara Shepherd, Christian County Education Coalition Committee.