Public HS: Does yours value sports over academics?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>I’ve been wanting to rant this since my freshman year lol, and whether a school is public or private, I think it should always make academics the utmost priority. This is just a list of my school’s recent habits:</p>

<p>-Football: My school has such a horrible team, yet they spend the money to get new uniforms like every other year. So much money is also spent maintaining the field. (I am in no way, shape, or form bashing jocks. Please don’t get offended, this is just an informal rant. I play a sport too.).</p>

<p>-While my school is spending more on sports like football and wrestling, they are cutting money on books, classes, and teaching.</p>

<p>-Extra Curriculars: New sports teams are created every year, yet there is a scarcity of academic clubs. Model UN is unheard of here, the school newspaper is a once-a-year thing, and NHS isn’t worth the time. Even the rest of the clubs are very weak and inactive.</p>

<p>-To expand on that, my school spends so much money on sporting events and pep rallies, and we are all encouraged to attend them. But academic recognition (or should I say, appreciation) is non-existent. </p>

<p>-Guidance Department: That’s the reason I’m on CC. My guidance department is focused on sending students to “No name” colleges or weak state colleges. They get overwhelmed when us “AP Students” ask about colleges above their knowledge.</p>

<p>-AP Classes: The basic ones are offered, and a few are exclusive based on academic merit. But other than that, it is very very difficult to fit all the AP’s you want in your schedule. Then we get stuck in study halls.</p>

<p>-Classes are being taken away every year to “maximize” the school’s efficiency.</p>

<p>-Gym is a requirement for all 4 years, yet English is the only academic subject required all 4 years.</p>

<p>Now the point of this list was to ask a question: Is your public school like this too? Or does yours have strong academics and weak sports? I enjoy going to my school, but I was just curious :)</p>

<p>To clear things up, I go to a relatively small public high school in an affluent area.</p>

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<p>It’s the other way around in my school. Academics > Sports</p>

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<p>^^ my high school is similar to yours especially when it comes to the gym requirement and guidance dept. moreover, our school barely has enough $$ for funding research equipment and supplies while it has enough money to make new jerseys for the sports teams. I don’t really complain about it, i’m a senior now and i could care less. Just do well in your school and suck up to teachers/gcs, and you’ll be fine xD</p>

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<p>***??? I thought my school undervalued academics lol</p>

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<p>oh totally sports first.</p>

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<p>^^^Yeah thanks :slight_smile: I’ve had senioritis since November, so I don’t care what happens anymore. It’s just always bothered me a little.</p>

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<p>Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), academics are easily considered over athletics. We didn’t even have a football team until this year lol, and it’s not 100% financially supported by the school. And the sports teams that almost always do well are the ones with stereotypically more intellectuals, like track and swimming (and conversely the ones with fewer necessary equipment).</p>

<p>We have a HUGE student fanbase for basketball though. Like, whether it’s home or away, we always get an entire section of bleachers for ourselves. It’s awesome.</p>

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<p>Oh yeah, your school sounds pretty much like mine. Really nice football stadium and other athletic facilities, but constantly cutting back on actual academic classes. The only languages our school offers now are Spanish and Latin, and they are completely cutting funding for art classes.</p>

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<p>Sports! Cut backs on academics every year. There is no funding for academic clubs, therefore only one or two really exist. Despite being an extremely small school, we have several people on payroll for sports; all of them are payed more than teachers.</p>

<p>It’s disgusting. We are a small school in a rich area, yet we have very poor academics (only 5 APs offered, you can only take 4 in most cases). All the funding either goes to sports or is cut from the budget.</p>

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<p>Well, our school I think has a good balance, though I think sports are still favored a bit more. Our robotics team is a very old one and very accomplished, and we get heavy funding (though not from the school). Our academic teams do get recognition and there are teachers who do care about the academic teams. However overall, sports are still favored funding wise and in other school spirit things such as the rallies.</p>

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<p>I should mention also that the vast majority of the teachers support academics over sports, and all of our academic clubs. </p>

<p>The administration and the school board are the problem. Teachers have no say whatsoever and any ideas for improvement, such as changing course offerings or curriculum, are always denied due to “budget cuts,” even though proposals are budget-neutral.</p>

<p>Does anyone else have a frustrating administration like this?</p>

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<p>Yeah, sports don’t really exist at my school. Haha.</p>

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<p>Definitely. My school literally sucks in terms of academics but we great sport teams and it’s adding two more next year. They’re a pretty big thing and honestly most of the student’s at my school don’t care about academics at all. But I’d say at least one out of every 5 is on a sports team. They redid our whole football field before the last season which was pretty nice since I actually played. And our school only offers 3 APs.</p>

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<p>Sports are the biggest part about our school, but I wouldn’t say that my public HS values it over academics. The sports program is largely supported by booster club money and other revenues from the student store, plus uniforms and stuff like that is bought by the players. Our sports facilities suck, but our teams are quite good. Especially, football–football almost rules our school. BUT, sports would be one of the first programs to be cut if our school runs out of money. Academics for most of the school is an absolute joke, but for AP/Honors, the administration makes sure it’s working.</p>

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<p>Two words: West Texas.</p>

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<p>not at all. most of our sports teams are decent or incredibly bad. only basketball is above average, so academics wins by default…</p>

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<p>I use to value Cross Country more than school.
Then I got injured and had to fill my empty soul with studying.</p>

<p>But overall, I think my school has a decent balance between sports and academics. However, we do pay too much attention to teams that don’t need it. EX: my Xc team won SECOND in STATE but we only got mentioned in announcements. The football team wins one game and it gets shown on TV.</p>

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<p>I live in the South–Friday Night Lights, baby. Our sports teams aren’t stellar (we’re in the suburbs, and the good football/basketball teams are from the inner city–our district is huge) but they have a pretty good turnout at games.</p>

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<p>our school is kinda bad at both…</p>

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<p>Your school sounds pretty similar to mine. Our football team is actually pretty good, though, and we’re not a very “affluent” town.</p>