The Middleton School District has not followed its own policy on charging businesses for using its outdoor facilities, but leadership has recognized the lapse and plans to find a remedy.
Superintendent Marc Gee said if he could go back in time, he would have handled things differently over the past year since new soccer fields were built at the high school. He presented the school board with a new policy proposal Monday, to consistently charge everyone who rents out district facilities in order to cover the costs of administration, power, maintenance and custodial services.
“Honestly, part of it is my fault because we were looking for ways to get people on the fields,” Gee told EdNews Monday. “Get people at the schools, get them using it, and feeling like, ‘Hey, the school is giving us something.'”
But the free unfettered use is changing.
Here’s how it started. A local patron last year built and donated artificial turf fields at Middleton High. Since then, a for-profit soccer club has been using them free of charge and advertising the fields as the club’s “home.” The donor is a coach for that soccer club.
Although the district has policies in place to charge businesses for facility rentals, Gee opted not to charge anyone who has used the fields over the past year.
The May failure of a $3.97 million, two-year levy changed the equation.
“When the levy didn’t pass, the board said, ‘No, everybody’s going to pay for everything,'” Gee said.
The district this year is cutting 38 full-time positions, eliminating the seventh-grade football program and raising student lunch fees.
As the district is forced to tighten its belt, students will pay an extra 25 cents for a carton of milk, and local sports organizations will soon have to start paying to play on school fields and gymnasiums.
The new artificial soccer fields
For years, a rough grass field with a gentle slope covered the south side of Middleton High’s property.
Ben McCallister, who used to coach soccer at the high school, said the practice fields were like playing in a jungle and could lead to injuries. As a longtime community soccer supporter, entrepreneur and Middleton resident with eight kids, McCallister wanted to change that.
“I said, ‘Hey, I want soccer to grow in this community, and I’d love to donate this field,'” McCallister told EdNews Tuesday.
In his initial conversations with district leaders about making the donation, McCallister said he told administrators that he would love for a club to be able to use the turf, preferably one that he was coaching in, but he never named a specific club.
McCallister is an unpaid coach for Global Sports Academy, a for-profit soccer club based in Middleton, Star and Eagle that charges $995 to $2,195 per athlete.
“I coach for GSA,” he said. “I make zero, so not only do I donate the fields, but I don’t make a penny from GSA.”
In April 2025, trustees approved a donor agreement with McCallister. He pledged to purchase and install artificial turf practice fields and a main soccer field at the school, anticipating to complete the project in phases over three years. Instead of donating money to the district, trustees allowed him to complete the project himself and hire his own contractors outside of the public bidding process.
‘Does it meet school policy? No’
The first phase was completed in August. Since then, the district has shirked its own policies and not charged anyone to use the two practice fields, known as the Valrheim Soccer Complex.
“We were consistent in that we didn’t charge anybody for the use, but we need to start charging,” Gee told trustees Monday.
In explaining why the district has not charged fees for using the new turf, Gee said he made that decision, not the trustees.
Several issues came up as he was navigating scheduling, renting and charging for the new turf.
The district’s fee schedule, last updated in 2017, does not include rates for the new fields, which can be divided into eight smaller sections that could each be rented. Gee said it was a “messy” process trying to work out agreements with different groups, and the district made some mistakes in scheduling and had to move groups that reserved space.
“I just said at this point we’re just not going to charge anybody,” Gee said. “We’re going to let this year go through.”
But, he said, everybody knew that once the district worked through those issues, there would be fees.
A concerned patron reached out to Gee and inquired about the lack of fees and lease agreements with GSA, as district policy requires. While the policy allows the superintendent to waive some fees, Gee acknowledged that he should have kept records of those transactions.
“Is it legal not to have a contract in place? Yes. Does it meet school policy? No,” Gee wrote in a June 4 email to a patron.
Four days later, he told trustees that he was working on an updated policy.
“We need to make sure the facilities that are being used are paying for themselves rather than us covering the costs,” Gee said at a June 8 school board meeting.
Gee said he told GSA executive director Michael Mollay that he was working on a base fee schedule. Mollay then offered to give the district $6,000.
The district agreed and sent GSA an invoice. Gee told EdNews that the $6,000 payment is an “insanely small amount” compared to what the district could have received through base fees over the past year.
Before and after turf
Before the new turf was completed, Global Sports Academy paid at least once to use district facilities.
Mollay last year signed a lease agreement for 16 hours of field use over the three days for the club’s soccer tryouts. The district charged $700.
That fee is in line with the district’s old fee schedule of $175 per four hours of using the school’s soccer field.
When it came time for the same tryouts at Middleton High this summer, there was no such payment.
GSA had scheduled tryouts from June 6-8, according to Gee, but two days before the event the district found a scheduling conflict and had to move the tryouts from the turf fields to the football stadium.
Due to that change of location — and the district’s scheduling mistake — Gee said the district did not charge GSA or require the club to fill out a lease agreement.
The ‘home of GSA’ — it’s ‘just ridiculous’
Global Sports Academy has repeatedly referred to the turf fields as the “home of GSA,” on social media and in meetings with parents.
“Valrheim Turf Complex, home of Global Sports Academy,” the club wrote in a September 2025 Instagram post. “A world class facility developing the next generation of Idaho greats…we are changing the game in Idaho.”
Gee said he thinks that language is “just ridiculous.”
“I’ve said that to them twice now to stop using that as ‘the home,’ because, like, I’m a public agency,” Gee said. “I have to let other teams use that if it’s not already scheduled.”
Mollay told EdNews in an email that the “home of” was simply an identifier and any sports organization would love to have a place to call home.
“However, if this posed a problem, we would stop using that term,” Mollay wrote.
A tax writeoff for the donor
When trustees approved the donor agreement with McCallister last spring, the engineer working on the project presented designs to the school board, separated into three phases over three years.
“That works best for the donor in terms of how it works with making charitable donations and tax implications for him,” Brent Orton with Orton Engineering told trustees.
McCallister told EdNews this week that donors would be less willing to give without tax benefits, adding that there are good reasons to spread donations out over time.
“I did get a tax break, but I don’t know who wouldn’t take the tax break,” he said.
In an interview, McCallister said he’s not sure if he will do a third phase and he would prefer to stay anonymous.
“All I’ve done is give,” he said.
EdNews sent a records request to the district seeking the charitable donation receipt it gave to McCallister. The document, signed by the district’s business manager, explains the extent of the project but does not list a total cost.
Gee said it’s up to the IRS and the donor to figure out the tax implications.
The new policy
Gee Monday presented a first reading of the new policy. No action was taken.
The policy allows student organizations and district programs to use school facilities for free, but all community organizations are subject to fees with a tiered approach:
- Community partners pay 25%.
- In-district nonprofits pay 50%.
- Out-of-district nonprofits pay 75%.
- For-profit organizations pay 100%.
“What we’re looking at with this policy, with the levy not passing — there’s just going to be an expectation for all groups,” Gee said.
The draft policy also allows for “community partnership agreements” with nonprofits that provide a “direct and substantial” benefit to the district. These partnerships could include reduced rates and priority scheduling.
Another provision allows for “multi-year use agreements.” These could establish recurring schedules and maintenance responsibilities.
To avoid scheduling conflicts, the draft policy includes a priority list. Instructional programs come first, followed by nonprofits and commercial businesses.
Trustee Jake Dempsey said he thinks the policy update is a great starting place. Hosting events, he said, requires administration, scheduling and trash removal.
“That should come from those activities 100%, and not a penny out of our budget,” Dempsey said.
Gee said the new policy would add protection for him as superintendent. The existing policy gives the superintendent a lot of leeway in making agreements, and the new policy includes checks and balances.
“I can tell you that I didn’t make any underhanded agreement or handshake agreement with Ben McCallister, but that doesn’t really prove it, right?” Gee told EdNews. “Having other people involved, having multiple steps that have to be followed — as much as people hate bureaucracy, sometimes that’s a protection for us all to make sure that we don’t get caught in a situation where I thought it was OK, but everybody else would have said, ‘Absolutely not.'”
If the trustees adopt the new policy, Gee said it’s likely they will come back next year and make more adjustments.
“We just have to keep trying to make them better,” he said.
