Bingo Gains Ground With Board : Education: Madison High’s plan to operate the nighttime games to raise needed revenue is opposed by Supt. Tom Payzant.

A plan to provide Madison High School with badly needed cash by operating nighttime adult bingo on school grounds appeared to gain support Tuesday from members of the San Diego school board.

“I don’t think running bingo games is the greatest idea in the world,” Trustee Sue Braun said at the board meeting. “However, I consider it worse not to have enough money to educate kids the way we want to.”

Parents of a fund-raising foundation at Madison proposed operating the bingo games once a week to raise money to cover some of the $150,000 worth of unmet needs at the Clairemont area campus, including a modern computer lab.

“The only way we can meet the needs of the school is through adequate fund-raising that will give us money,” Glenn Barfell, vice president of the Madison Foundation, said in an interview. “We can’t get it by selling candy and cookies.”

But San Diego Unified School District Supt. Tom Payzant, who opposes the plan, said he is concerned that Madison and other schools that might follow its lead, could become too dependent on funds generated by the games.

“What I fear is that, when we look more and more to fund-raising activities such as bingo and the lottery . . . that they start out to be supplemental kinds of sources, but they all too quickly have a way of of becoming sources of revenue that provide support for the basic programs of the schools,” he said.

Payzant also reiterated his concern over the example such gambling would set for students. But board member Braun cited religious schools that operate such games to generate funds.

“If one can pray where people play bingo, then one can certainly educate children where people play bingo,” Braun said. “If it’s not morally corrupting the church, then I don’t see where it’s morally corrupting the school.”

Barfell, along with Madison Foundation President Ray Wilson, who spoke during the public hearing part of the meeting, asked the board to consider allowing the foundation to run a pilot bingo program for up to three years.

It was an offering well received by Trustee Shirley Weber and others.

“I do favor in some way a pilot (bingo program) . . . so that we can think about the strengths and weaknesses,” Weber said. “And it forces us to come back in a year’s time to look at what we’ve done.”

For Madison parents, a pilot program is a chance to demonstrate how their revenue-generating “tool” can help meet their school’s budget needs.

“This money has to be raised by our foundation because it’s not available from the state,” Wilson said. “The district is talking about cutting funds; this is why we’re proposing bingo . . . so that we can meet the needs of our schools.”

The San Diego school district, the nation’s eighth-largest, has no policy on the matter, and the five trustees will be under no obligation to follow a negative recommendation from Payzant.

The board is expected to vote within two weeks on the proposal.