close to $46

close to $46,000.

This set of options would accomplish all of the board’s top priorities and essentially maintain the status quo at the sports facilities. Daktronics has also presented options for enhanced technology, with pricetags that are multiple times higher than standard replacements – but with the potential for revenue generation to offset the costs.

A 7 by 25 foot videoboard on the football/track field, for example, would cost $197,000, and if the size were expanded to 13 by 25, the price would rise to $250,000. By comparison, a standard scoreboard replacement would cost $27,500.

Animated graphics and messages like “Get Loud!” could be projected on a videoboard, and the larger board would allow for fullsized images of student athletes and instant replay videos, Woyak said.

Athletic director Curt Miller said Daktronics would also provide technology to produce “hype videos” before games, and it also offers a curriculum, for $2,500 per year, for teaching tech ed students how to produce videos and graphics. Miller said a fair number of mid-sized school districts in Wisconsin have purchased these videoboards, and the other athletic directors he’s talked to say they withstand the elements pretty well.

If the board decided to go this route, the district would look to sign five-year contracts with local businesses interested in running advertisements on the boards. Socalled “super anchor” sponsors would be charged $7,500 per year, generating $37,500 over five years.

Assuming the district could find enough sponsors, it could potentially recoup the cost of a videoboard within five years, and after that, it would be a revenue generator for the district, according to Daktronic.

Miller said he believes advertising revenue could potentially be an “untapped resource” for the district, though he also acknowledged that a videoboard would require a lot more of an upfront investment. Videoboard speakers need to be 60 to 100 amps, versus the 3-amp speakers on a typical sound system, for example.

“There are some positives and there are so many challenges with the videoboard option,” he said.

Board members said they were reluctant to go beyond what the district needs for basic replacements and questioned whether the community would support expensive videoboards.

“I think we’re shooting way too high for our budget and for what we need here in Marathon right now,” said board member Lia Klumpyan.

Klumpyan said the district could spend a total of about $131,000 to update the equipment in a way that improves the game experience for fans and players without having to spend thousands more.

“We’re looking at all this money, and not one cent of this is going into education in the classroom,” she said.

Board member Paula Vesely said she agreed with Klumpyan’s concerns and questioned how sustainable it was for the district to seek out advertisers on a perpetual basis.

“It might work for a year or two, but what happens two or three years down the road?” she wondered.

Board member Ted Knoeck said the board has talked before about not going back to the same businesses for money over and over, and he’s nervous about asking businesses to commit to $7,500 a year, but he also sees some potential.

“Even though this is money out of our pocket right now, eventually it pays for itself,” he said.

Miller said a more lucrative option would be to purchase a videoboard for the main high school gym, simply because it would allow potential advertisers to run ads over a much longer stretch of time each year. The gym hosts 26 basketball games, six volleyball matches and several wrestling meets every year, compared to four home football games and one or track meets a year, he noted.

A competitor of Daktronics, Nevco, has submitted some preliminary cost estimates for an indoor videoboard in the range of $75,000 to $125,000, Miller said. If the board wanted to, it could hold off on that option until a later date, he said.

Board members seemed more amenable to considering an indoor videoboard at some point in the future, with Beth Seubert referring to it as a possible “phase two” of athletic facility upgrades.

Once Nevco submits its full set of price quotes, Woyak said the topic will appear again on the agenda again for the board’s regular monthly meeting on Aug. 13.

Miller encouraged board members to consider the videoboard option as way of teaching kids how to use technology and further incentivize participation in athletics.

“It’s nice to put fun, cool things in front of our athletes,” he said. “We know this stuff will affect probably 90 percent of the students at some point between elementary and high school.”

Other business

■ The board accepted an offer from American Asphalt to resurface the high school’s back parking lot during the summer of 2026, for $106,970. In the meantime, Woyak said she would work with the village to get some of the larger potholes filled this summer.

■ The board voted to publish a preliminary 2025-2026 budget with an estimated property tax levy of $5.1 million and a mil rate of $8.09 per thousand dollars of property (up from $7.92 last year). The preliminary budget needs to be published ahead of the district’s annual meeting on Aug. 13 at 7 p.m., but the final budget will not be approved by the board until October after the district finds out how much state aid it will be receiving and how much enrollment and property values have changed since last year.

■ The board approved the hiring of Raymond Rodriquez, a recent graduate of UW-Platteville, as the high school’s new social studies teacher. Rodriquez is not certified to teach college level courses online, so Woyak said the district will have to contract with someone else to provide that instruction on a perstudent basis.

■ The board renewed the hiring of Rick Jensen as middle school cross-country coach.