Within Justice High School, there are currently over 80 athletic clubs and programs which all require vari­ous amounts of support and fund­ing. A crucial part of creat­ing and sustain­ing a func­tion­ing program is a suffi­cient budget, but where does athletic fund­ing come from? “FCPS ONLY cover the cost of trans­porta­tion and refer­ees. Every­thing else is the respon­si­bil­ity of the teams to raise money for equip­ment, uniforms and any other intan­gi­bles that may arise,” said David Waldack, Pres­i­dent of the Justice Athletic Boosters.

The Justice Athletic Boost­ers are the main facil­i­ta­tor of the money funded for Justice Athlet­ics. Compen­sat­ing for the funds not provided by the FCPS budget has been an over­whelm­ing task, “Among the biggest chal­lenges this past year has been the inabil­ity to raise funds … [which] are crit­i­cal to every sport since FCPS only provides … a frac­tion of what is needed,” said Steve Prim­rose, former Justice Athletic Booster Pres­i­dent, in an Athletic Booster post published in August of 2021.
Brian Garvey, the Justice Direc­tor of Student Activ­i­ties, over­sees the Justice athlet­ics budget. “I have a school account that’s labeled athlet­ics, and that account [does­n’t] get fed by FCPS … I would say like 99% of the money comes from ticket sales, games, and booster dona­tions. Peri­od­i­cally through­out the year [the Athletic Boost­ers] cut me a check as a dona­tion to the athletic depart­ment.”
Accord­ing to Garvey, the athlet­ics budget is distrib­uted on a finan­cial needs basis. Despite the fact that certain sports bring in more revenue and recog­ni­tion; all funds are distrib­uted equally. “So all [the revenue] goes into my athlet­ics account. [Which then gets] spread out, to every­body. There are miscon­cep­tions [where] people think we spend all our money on foot­ball … that’s not the case,” said Garvey.

Waldack supports the claim of Justice’s equal fund­ing, “As our name implies, we are an Athletic Booster Club, and not a Foot­ball or Volley­ball Booster club. Our sole purpose is to raise money for all of the teams. It just so happens that foot­ball is the biggest oppor­tu­nity for us to raise money.”
Although the Justice athletic depart­ment distrib­utes funds on a needs basis, private fund­ing varies. “[The Athletic] Booster club has sepa­rate accounts where teams can [privately] raise money … And then spend, out of that, more on the things that they want. And not neces­sar­ily need … Which I don’t typi­cally use athlet­ics money [for]. Because if I was doing that, I’d have to do it for every­body. And we just don’t have that money,” said Garvey.
Conse­quently, the increased focus on private fund­ing can mean teams who receive less public atten­tion are unable to inde­pen­dently raise suffi­cient funds. “I know the base­ball team has a lot more [private] fund­ing [than the soft­ball team], I think they’re also provided with more coach­ing and staff … people that can actu­ally advo­cate for them to get that kind of fund­ing. Whereas in soft­ball, we currently don’t have any coaches. Last year, we had a coach who left in the middle of the season,” said senior Megan Healy, captain of the varsity soft­ball team.
Predom­i­nantly male sports tend to obtain more recog­ni­tion and there­fore fund­ing compared to their female coun­ter­parts. “The base­ball team [goes] on a trip to Myrtle Beach every year … [The soft­ball team does­n’t] even get to partake in a tour­na­ment … We had a shutout game against Thomas Jeffer­son High School, which was I think one of the first ever in Justice history [which] was not discussed … We don’t ever get announce­ments during the morn­ings about our wins … On social media posts, we don’t ever have photog­ra­phers … [Which] the base­ball team [gets],” says Healy, “We had 17 canceled prac­tices this year… the fund­ing is not the same in the slight­est.”
The girl’s basket­ball team has felt the same divide. “In my opin­ion, girls basket­ball does not get simi­lar payment dona­tions compared to other sports,” says varsity basket­ball player Halima Hajhas­san, “Boys basket­ball has a major crowd compared to girls basket­ball. We have maybe 15 people show­ing up to games max. Gender plays a big role, a lot of indi­vid­u­als believe that women’s sports will never be [as] enter­tain­ing as men’s sports.”
The tenta­tive athletic budget depends on privately gath­ered funds. There­fore schools with students from higher socioe­co­nomic groups are able to inde­pen­dently fund larger athletic budgets. “There’s schools who have way bigger athletic budgets than [Justice] … We played at Robin­son a couple weeks ago, [and] they just got a brand new score­board … And here we are, trying to figure out how we’re gonna feed kids before games … It creates an inequity,” says Garvey, “Fair­fax County has 25 high schools. They’re not all equal, they’re just not.”
Poten­tial solu­tions regard­ing wealth inequal­ity within FCPS have been discussed, “The school board was talk­ing about provid­ing [equity fund­ing] to schools … and it would’ve been based on your free and reduced lunch rates,” said Garvey. Mean­ing schools from lower economic classes would be able to provide suffi­cient supplies directly from the equity budget.
Over­all, the current FCPS athletic budget gener­ates a system that essen­tially depends on the fund­ing programs are able to inde­pen­dently produce. The economic divide it creates impacts all aspects of FCPS athletics.