Following the path of several schools in Columbia, MO, Parkway School district will be teaming up with Kelly Sports Properties (KSP) in an attempt to help extracurricular activity funds.

“It’s a model based after a public school’s contract with the sports marketing firm,” District Athletic Director Mike Roth said. “It helps us with intellectual properties and helps us promote our assets which is the students, activities and athletic programs.”

KSP, an experienced advertising company that did some work with the NCAA, will be attempting to use their skills in advertising to connect Parkway to some businesses around town.

“KSP will be contacting some local businesses who want to establish partnerships with Parkway School District,” Roth said. “Then, those opportunities will be enhanced through the advertising that we will do at Parkway. Basically, every program will have advertising.”

Every athletic program and after-school activity should be receiving funds as a result from the deal with KSP.

“It [the contract] will provide equity for all the programs,” Roth said. “It includes all activities and all MSSHA sponsored events. All of them will be positively affected by the greater revenue in the future.”

The advertising that will generate most of this revenue will be much more in depth than just some posters along the walls.

“[There will be] new video scoreboards that will turn [events] into a college experience with advertising, public service announcements, and replays,” Roth said.

While the scoreboard may seem like simply a new toy to play with, Roth indicates that it plays a big role in one of KSP’s main goals, advertising.

“The video scoreboard will create a mini studio,” Roth said. “It will be like a production event. There will also be media guides that will be updated so there will be a weekly review, getting some of the journalism kids’ reviews and articles in.

One of KSP’s main goals is creating opportunities like these for kids.”

School districts such as Parkway pride themselves on positively affecting students. Money is necessary in making that a reality.

“We are always in a careful position with our funds,” Parkway Board President Beth Feldman said. “Two years ago, we had to make some cuts and we are still not operating with our reserves that are required by our policies, which is 17%, so we always need more revenue.”

With the board operating with less money, the possibility of KSP bringing in more revenue was a factor in the decision.

“One of the advantages that I see are that we need more sources of revenue to maintain our extracurriculars and this is a new source that will not cost our taxpayers any additional funds,” Feldman said.

Another part of the discussion was who the deal would affect and how they would be affected.

“We decided it was a win-win situation because it would benefit both our students in providing more funding and our taxpayers by not having to get more money from them,” Feldman said.

The board did take into account some of the negatives that the district might face.

“Some negatives were that some parent groups would be upset because it comes across as competition to some of their fundraisers,” Feldman said. “But this is in no way competition because this is advertising on a much bigger scale.”

In fact, according to Roth, 90-95% of the fundraising that students participate in will remain unchanged.

Parkway will have a right to refuse any business that Kelly brings to the table. For example, if a business that sells alcohol wants to be advertised, Parkway has the right to reject that business, as stated in the contract.

Upon asking KSP representative Colin See for a statement, he deferred to the public contract that includes the outline of the deal.

One of the aspects highlighted in the contract was the tiered system of commission that KSP will be receiving.

On top of the public contract, the district plans to keep everyone as informed as possible, according to Roth. After the deal was approved on Jan. 13, Roth said that the contract was rolled out to booster clubs and head coaches in a presentation at Central. Now, the district is working on a press release to get the information out to even more people.

This is all a part of Parkway’s goal to keep everyone as informed as possible.

“Transparency is so very important,” Roth said. “With this being new, there is always going to be a lot of questions. We encourage people to contact the building athletic directors, myself or the principles. We will answer any questions and try to be transparent with everything.”