<p>Yep. Sports is always worth more than Academics at my school.</p>
<p>Yes, they do value sports over academics (for the most part)
-our school wanted to build a gym that was bigger than permitted by state law for a school of our size. In order to receive permission to build a gym of such immensity, they needed to add extra classrooms so it’d be in proportion…but these classrooms are not being used to lessen the amount of students in a class. They are designated for clubs that maybe meet twice a month.
-Our school’s clubs receive little funding. Our newspaper is award winning but we receive no support from the school, we have to fund it entirely through advertising. Clubs meet sporadically at our school unless they have been recognized on a major level. We used to have more academic clubs (e.g. UN, Spanish, Sign Language) but most of them have gradually disappeared and we are left with Robotics, Academic Bowl, NHS, the Newspaper and the Yearbook.
-At the middle school level, clubs are planned around sports. The administrators decided they didn’t want athletes to be prevented from enrolling in clubs, so now NO clubs can meet after school to accomodate the athletes. There is only an activity period once every two weeks for students to join clubs.</p>
<p>Many of the athletic teams at my school are a complete joke, but they still receive a substantial amount of funding. Luckily, I don’t feel as though academics have ever been compromised in favor of athletics. I guess there are some benefits of attending high school in a pretty affluent area.</p>
<p>Athletics don’t get too much attention. Our football team sucks. It went four years without winning a single game. A lot of money is spent on APs, science labs, that sort of thing. Our alumni kindly donate a lot of money (they paid for an entire arts and science wing 10 years ago) so academics are never neglected.</p>
<p>Counselors definitely mainly focus on top students. I remember for the first week of school, when all the kids want to come in to the counselor’s office and change their schedule, they had security guards block off the room to most. I walked up on the first day and a counselor came out, said I was one of their “stars” or whatever, escorted me in and changed my schedule within minutes to how I wanted it. Whenever I come into the office, the counselor immediately says “you wanted to see me?” while other kids have to schedule appointments and wait forever if they come in without one. I think it’s really unfair actually.</p>
<p>A large amount of money was raised for new science and math programs in the high school. It was used to build a new gym. 'Nuff said.</p>
<p>We do have an excellent football team, but still.</p>