The Riverside-Brookfield High School Martin H. Kennelly Athletic Complex got a new scoreboard this spring. In late March, a new scoreboard was installed to replace the problem-plagued old scoreboard.
The new scoreboard cost $58,559, with all but $8,559 of the funding coming from a grant from Aramark, the district’s cleaning contractor. Aramark gave the $50,000 grant as part of a two-year contract renewal, which the school board approved last December.
The rest of the funding for the new scoreboard came from a donation from the RBHS Boosters Club.
“The scoreboard was at zero cost to the school district,” Superintendent Kevin Skinkis told the school board at a recent meeting.
The new scoreboard was manufactured by Forest Park-based Daktronics and is operated with a wireless controller. It is expected to be more reliable than the old scoreboard, which experienced frequent issues and stopped working last fall during a sectional final boys soccer game between Lyons Township High School and Hinsdale Central.
The old scoreboard was 12 years old and had been troublesome for some time.
“We had it rewired three years in a row,” Skinkis said. “It was just time for a new scoreboard.”
Aramark in recent years has regularly rewarded RBHS for its loyalty to the cleaning company, whose services cost the school district $1.2 million for the 2018-19 school year.
The company, which originally was hired to provide custodial services at RBHS in 1996, first floated the idea of offering grants to RBHS during negotiations about renewing its contract back in 2010.
A $100,000 grant was written into the three-year renewal deal approved by the school board that year. The grant money in 2010 was earmarked for general capital expenditures.
In 2012, when the district sought to amend its deal with Aramark in order to save money, the company agreed to the change and announced the amendment would come with a $40,000 “investment grant” to the school.
When the RBHS school board renewed Aramark’s contract in 2015, the company provided the school with a $165,000 grant.
Bob Uphues contributed to this report.
