I am also going to have to agree those that feel the "we do not have enough money" argument is very lame. Let us say you pay $60 per official and you sell tickets for $4 to get into the gym, all you have to do 15 people to pay for the extra official. Also considering the concessions and the booster club fund raisers, it is really not that much money in the bigger scheme of things. I will also say that many of the smaller communities do get more fans consistently. That does not mean it applies to everyone but in my state many schools have consolidated their sports programs with other schools that had over all funding problems. I agree that education should be the first priority of every school, but an extra $400 to $600 is not going to crash most schools in a sport like basketball that in many parts of the country gets a lot of fans. At the very least these schools should not complain the officiating is bad. If officiating shortage is a bad thing, then hiring a 3rd official for games is not going to hurt those numbers because you will get officials to stay in longer and you can groom younger officials to become acclimated to a system that will keep them in longer as well.
Let us keep this in mind. A junior college program pays their officials double of what many HS pay and they in many cased do not get 1/3 of the fans many HS get. Somehow they survive.
Peace