GRAND FORKS — Members of the Grand Forks School Board Finance Committee heard a report Monday on where the district is at with funding new scoreboards for Cushman Field as well as Red River and Central high schools.
The district is seeking business sponsorships in the amount of $566,000 after previously striving for $1.2 million to buy video and score boards for each of the locations, according to Activities Director Mike Biermaier. The district decided to adjust a previous plan that would have included a video board for Cushman as well, but low interest among potential sponsors prompted a change to only replace the scoreboard there.
“At this point, we have eight committed businesses,” Biermaier said. “Three of those are in the top ones that would be the hardest to get. The other ones — we have a lot more interest now that we’ve dropped the price points down — so I don’t foresee it being a problem to get those sponsorships.”
Biermaier added that all of the funding for the score and video boards will come from sponsorships.
“We’re not committed until we have all the money,” he said. “It’s 100% sponsorship paid from the pre engineering to electrical installation, everything.”
Following his update to the finance committee, Biermaier told the Grand Forks Herald that video boards at Central and Red River would allow for a higher production value for sporting events.
“A video board is going to be able to display live video, commercials, replays and more animated types of things versus a scoreboard that just has numbers,” he said. “It also comes with some added value to businesses to understand that we’re going to be able to get advertising right on that video board.”
Also at Monday’s meeting, committee members voted to advance a $107,340 bid to the Bismark-based Knife River Corporation to resurface the parking lots at Schroeder Middle School and Wilder Elementary.
Carter DeJong is the K-12 education reporter for the Grand Forks Herald. He previously spent two years covering education at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in Alaska and The Edwardsville Intelligencer in Illinois. He graduated from Indiana University in 2023 with a B.A. in journalism.
