Liverpool — With head injuries on the rise in many youth sports, the Liverpool Central School District is weighing the possibility of additional athletic trainer coverage. At its Nov. 9 meeting, the school board discussed the 3 percent of student-athletes who suffered concussions during the fall 2015 sports season and whether additional trainer services would help solve the problem.

The district currently employs one full-time athletic trainer and pays for 20 to 22 trainers per diem for various athletic events throughout the year.

The 2015 fall sports season had 939 student-athletes participate, 29 of whom suffered concussions.

Athletics Director Ari Liberman broke down the numbers of the fall concussions:

• Football (grades 7 through 12): 21

• Girls varsity soccer: 2

• Girls junior varsity soccer: 3

• Boys varsity soccer: 1

• Field hockey: 1

• Cheerleading: 1

For the first session of the winter season, 672 athletes have signed up.

“It’s unlikely that having more trainers is going to reduce the number of concussions, but what it does offer is perhaps a better oversight of whether or not those athletes are receiving whatever attention they need prior to returning,” said Superintendent Dr. Mark Potter.

Board member Stacey Balduf, whose daughter is a diver and a pole vaulter, said that the trainer’s job isn’t just about preventing or treating concussions.

“The trainer has also worked with athletes to keep them safe from other injuries,” Balduf pointed out. “It might be money well spent if we can squeak it.”

Board member Michael Leone asked Liberman if the district’s trainer is “overloaded.”

“Most often at the end of the school day, that’s the busiest room,” Liberman said.

The trainer, Liberman said, covers all home sporting practices and events. In addition the trainer teaches student-athletes preventive care and treats injuries that occur at home. Liverpool sends a trainer to off-campus “home” events, such as hockey games at the Lysander Ice Arena, and some away games if the host school does not have a trainer.

continued — Liberman said the trainer, the school physician and the school nurse work together to determine the “return to play” progression for a student-athlete who has suffered a concussion.

The board took no action on this discussion item.

District receives $5M from Smart Schools Bond Act

The board also heard from Director of Technology Bonnie Mangicaro at the Nov. 9 meeting. Mangicaro presented the district’s plan for the first phase of spending the $5 million it was awarded from the 2014 Smart Schools Bond Act. The board is expected to vote on the plan Nov. 23.

Mangicaro told the board that the district will use the $5,345,676 across three phases. The first phase will apply $2,420,470 toward improving the district’s network infrastructure and providing teachers with interactive projectors and instructional laptops.

Mangicaro said the district frequently has been “hitting the ceiling” of its allotted 200 megabits per second (Mbps), so the district asked OCM-BOCES to increase its ceiling to 300 Mbps. Liverpool contracts with BOCES for its wide area network (WAN). Mangicaro said the increasing use of cloud-based storage and software, such as Google Apps, have driven up demands on the district’s network.

Phase I of the Smart Schools funding will apply $947,620 toward upgrading the district’s core switch and its building switches, which provide access to the WAN. Currently, the district has a capacity of one gigabit (Gb), so it is seeking to expand that capacity to 10 Gb.

Phase I also provides $771,850 for interactive projectors and $701,000 for instructional laptop computers.

The district will split the remaining funds equally between the second and third phases of the project. Each phase will have $1,462,603. Mangicaro did not detail phases two and three in her presentation.

Start time committee inches along

Potter also updated the board on the progress of the district’s Modified School Start Time Committee, which is investigating whether the district should start school later in the day.

continued — Potter said the 25-member committee is still in the information-gathering phase and has come up with a list of questions to discuss. The list includes questions about the “tipping point” of the amount of sleep that is beneficial to students, where the district would see cost impacts, the comparison of student achievement in block scheduling and more.

“I think they’re really trying to brainstorm some ways to objectively measure the outcomes,” board member Kevin Van Ness said.

Van Ness said the committee wants to remove “emotion and subjectivity” from its decision-making process. Board member James Root asked if committee members had “preconceived opinions” about the topic.

When Root asked how long it would take the committee to come to a conclusion, Potter said he wasn’t sure.

“The number of questions that get asked unearths more questions,” Potter said.

The committee was scheduled to meet next on Nov. 16.