BETTER BLACK NEWS: Budget Cuts and Douglass High School's Cheer Team

Transcript

[Music] if you live in Oklahoma you are very familiar with the budget cuts that are affecting our school systems and of course it is really affecting some of the programs here in Oklahoma City for our schools here at Douglas high school the cheerleading team are experiencing those same things Naomi tell me a little bit about this program the cheer team tell me a little bit about it well this is Douglas high school cheer squad we also have middle school cheerleaders and our program basically competes at OSS AAA Oklahoma's secondary schools Activities Association and competitions and we would love to expand to other cheer competitions and of the Oklahoma City area it is competitive we are competitive we just competed last week at the o SSAS OS s AAA regionals and milla City High School we got fourth place we're a for a cheer squad now one of the reasons I'm here is you know because of the budget cuts or whatever and you know funding that you all need and everything I'm a little bit about like you know some of the supplies that y'all you know are needing well as you see we just have three cheer mats a real cheer floor is nine mats so when we get ready for competition we have to learn a whole routine on three mats and then put it on a nine mat floor so it's really hard for us to get our spacing and formations together so that's one major thing another thing is we compete against schools who are very funded so tumbling is funded and choreography is funded so we have three tumblers out here that sambal they learned in the street they learned basically hey I'm going to tumble but we need to get more of our girls tumbling so we would need like tumbling funds so we need equipment like a cheese mat which is like a looks like a wedge of cheese and it's colorful teach these girls how to backflip really quick or a trampoline trampolines are great for tumbling stuff like that for tumbling equipment and then also just to get our girls more flexible like stunts traps little things like that to help us become more competitive with schools our compete against we compete against schools like Heritage Hall mount st. Mary's Tuttle schools who have unlimited funding and pay like ten thousand dollars a year for cheerleading as compared to our girls who paid two hundred dollars a year now is there a reason y'all keep that price solo for them for the meat to be $200 is there a reason y'all do that or just because y'all can't charge why is it so low it is low because we feel like our demographic of kids cannot afford a $10,000 cheer squad so that's another reason why I created empower all-stars so they can actually do more like the other squads girls on other high school teams are on all-star squads to better their skills so they cheer all year round empower is a way for these girls to cheer all year round to get their skill up but it's a less price usually all-star Chilean cost between three hundred dollars a month well two and three hundred hours a month our office our Chilean cost $75 a month so to make sure that we give them an avenue to make them more competitive against other teams can you tell me what your role here is with the girls here at Douglass high school with the cheerleaders what is your role yes ma'am I am the cheer sponsor and I also kind of serve as the dual purpose I also coach now I remember we were speaking earlier you were telling me a little bit about how some of these girls you know you get to know on a personal level I spend a lot of time together you were telling me some of these girls are like homeless and they still get to be it surely to tell me a little bit about that okay well right now I don't have any girls that are homeless but I do have several that are in a lot of alternative living situations I have a couple of girls that are in foster care I have several girls who live in single father homes I also have children who continue to go to school here because they want to be cheerleaders one of my kids refused placement because she wanted to go to Douglass to cheer when you say placement you mean like she had a home that they could have fostered her or whatever you chose to stay in the shelter until they could find her an alternative placement because she wanted to be here and it was a sense of stability and it's a sense of home for them I they become they spend so much time together essentially they become a family and see with these budget cuts and then whatever else funding that they don't really provide for you all you know I hope this never gets cut but if this does get cut they could be shuttering some dreams but for some of these young ladies hopefully being cut isn't in our in our future because essentially when that cut a program they're cutting the pay of the person who's in charge of the program in transportation and this is the first year where we've kind of had a little bit of leeway and like in the past I we will continue with this program but we would just have to figure it out and it will go back to being as hard as it was in the very beginning so if somebody's watching this and they're like okay I want to help these girls out I want to help them financially how could they potentially donate I mean if they just have $10 to give or whatever no I feel like no amount is too small or too great how could they give you you know they help you they could always contact us at the school you can always shoot me an email my email address is C e Patterson and okay CPS org the phone number to the school is five a seven four two zero zero and they can just ask for me or to speak with the financial secretary Cheryl brown and we will be able to help you and provide you with a done donors receipt you know so I'm really happy that y'all are doing it yes ma'am we serve seven through twelve and we're here to push these girls to limits that they never knew that they could reach our program is here hopefully it continues to grow over the course of as long as I'm here well y'all heard it here first I'm Jillian Whitaker reporting for better black news reminding you to be better [Music]