PORTLAND — The school board will not vote before September on a proposed policy that would eliminate individual booster clubs for sports teams at Portland and Deering high schools.

Instead, the board approved a plan Tuesday night that will allow it to get public feedback at four public meetings in July and August. The district will post the proposal on its website this week, to make sure residents are informed when they attend those meetings.

“We want a great level of input from the community,” said Superintendent Jim Morse, “so we end with a product that Portland can support.”

The new policy would replace teams’ individual booster clubs with two booster clubs – one at each high school – to oversee all sports fundraising. The money would go into one pot that all teams at a school would use.

The policy is a response to potential violations of Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination in athletics based on gender. Last year, the school district’s law firm, Drummond Woodsum, issued a report criticizing shoddy bookkeeping and possible gender inequities in sports at Portland’s high schools.

Although the district is likely in compliance with Title IX, it is difficult to know because the district has kept such poor financial records on its booster clubs, the report said.

Under the current policy, some booster clubs have submitted detailed financial reports, some have submitted minimal information and others haven’t submitted any information.

That makes it difficult for school officials to know how much money is being spent by each team, what that money is being spent on, and whether there are inequities between boys’ and girls’ sports.

In one example cited by the report, Portland High’s baseball team plays at Hadlock Field, the state-of-the-art home of the Portland Sea Dogs. The school’s softball team, meanwhile, plays at Payson Park, with no bathrooms or changing rooms.

The federal Office of Civil Rights is reviewing Portland High’s records to determine whether any Title IX violations have occurred.

School officials took the blame Tuesday night for the shoddy bookkeeping and said their policies must change.

“This is through no fault of … the boosters and the parents,” said board member Sarah Thompson. “They did the best they could with the direction they had (from the district’s central office), which is none.”

The new policy would authorize the district to hire an administrator who would supervise all athletic activities, including financial reports. By having one booster club and one person in charge, each school could make sure that finances are well-kept and comply with federal law, school officials said.

The public meetings on the policy will be held July 18 and Aug. 2 at Deering High, and July 19 and Aug. 1 at Portland High. If approved, the policy will take effect in October, under the current time line.

The proposed policy also addresses a separate major issue: shrinking sports budgets.

In addition to consolidating booster clubs, the policy would establish a nonprofit foundation whose goal would be to raise $400,000 per year by 2015. The money would help sports and other extracurricular activities and ease the burden on taxpayers, officials said.

The policy also would authorize the hiring of a foundation director, although officials still want to discuss how they would fund that position.

The district has cut $200,000, about 10 percent, from its sports budget in the past two years, said board member Jaimey Caron. It’s painful, he said, because studies show that students who participate in extracurriculars such as sports have, on average, a grade point average 1 point higher than those who don’t.

Committee member Ed Brian said having a foundation and a director is a way to keep extracurricular programs sustainable.

Most parents at Tuesday’s meeting expressed reservations about the policy. Kirk Murchie compared having one pot of money for all sports to a “welfare state.”

John Coyne, a city councilor and a booster, said parents’ participation in fundraisers would drop if they didn’t know how much of the money would go toward their children’s activities.

Jane Frey, a booster, said other communities have made one-booster systems work and she is excited about the process, but feels the time line is rushed and will lead to flaws.

Getting public input this summer – and making changes based on that input – is key to growing support for the proposed policy, school officials said.

“We haven’t done a good job of (getting public input) so far,” Caron said. “We’re getting back on track now.”

Staff Writer Jason Singer can be contacted at 791-6437 or at: jsinger@pressherald.com