The impact of an Ohio school district's decision to cut sports

Parent Cafe
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<p>so basically, MiamiDAP, are you saying that people who can’t afford to pay a few hundred dollars for an after-school sport should rethink their priorities?</p>

<p>My school district was very close to cancelling all sports last year, but thanks to a bunch of parents from schools on the wealthier end of the district, they managed to salvage it, although I think they have to pay somewhere around $200 per sport now. I’m sure that’s fine and dandy for plenty of you guys who had to pay throughout high school, but for schools like mine (and I’m guessing this Ohio school) that are in the crappier parts of town, where parent participation for most of the students is nonexistent, where after school ECs are needed to keep people from shadier activities, paying that much for after school sports simply isn’t justified/possible. Idk about this district, but there was plenty of extra spending going on in other areas of my hs school district, and cutting sports turned out not to be imperative after all, huh.</p>

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<p>I remember a line from a marx bros movie (as best as I can remember): “Do we have a college?”
“yes”
Do we have a stadium?"
“yes”
“well we can’t afford both, tomorrow we tear down the college.”
“but where will the students sleep”
“where they always sleep- in the classroom”</p>

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<p>I come from a pretty conservative state. Taxpayers are usually pretty tight-fisted. We also have a lot of homeschoolers and church-based private schools.</p>

<p>I am in total agreement with people who say that schools can get top-heavy with adminstration and adjunct professionals if the taxpayers don’t ride herd on this. I also agree that we don’t need luxury-type school facilities, although we should have durable, adequate facilities for the children.</p>

<p>However, I have to agree with whoever said that some of this gritching is just homeschoolers declaring war on the public schools. I talked with one educator who said this complaining about extracurricular funding is a concentrated effort launched by people who want to defund public schools. She said there are people who coach the homeschool community on how to attack funding for sports programs in the public schools. One way they do it is to convince older people, unmarried people, etc., that it is “unfair” to expect them to fund “luxury” programs in schools, like football teams.</p>

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<p>I’ve never heard of a school system funding extracurriculars before, other than bonuses to the heads of sports, band, and debate. My parents shell out a significant amount yearly for me to attend debate tournaments and participate in clubs, and for my brother and sister to do the same (substituting sports for debate). It’s not fair in the sense that it probably keeps people out of the running for these activities, but plenty of clubs charge no more than a 5$ membership fee. I think it’s more fair overall to keep these programs up and running in a school system than allow everyone the equal opportunity not to participate. I hardly think high school would be high school without friday night football or the camaraderie of a team dinner after a big tournament/meet/game/match.</p>

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<p>when I was in school, football was a hugely profitable sport. In fact it was way more than self-sustaining. The profits from football paid for lesser earning sports such as baseball and every girls sport. In my school, every girls sport lost money, but the football profit picked up the slack, just as it did for the boys sports that lost money.</p>

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<p>This is such a depressing post. In NJ, where I live, I know of no school, literally, that does not fund its ECs. No one pays extra. I myself am a teacher in a poor district (30% free lunches), and yet we have fully funded sports, a fantastic choir and band, and so on. I have to say the voters would rather have gigantic classes than cut out band or choir or plays. The arts are REALLY valued here, and sports are too. Again, I’m in a poor district and parents would never once think of making students pay in order to be in band or choir or the musical! That would mean that poor kids wouldn’t have the same chances as rich kids. Ok, I know that’s how life is, but to make it so very blatant, as an official school policy, I find that appalling. $100 is a lot of money to our kids. </p>

<p>As for the programs being cut, well, as a teacher I’m in COMPLETE agreement about bloated administrators. It seems they’re the last on the list for cuts, the first to speak about them, and - with the exception of the principal - completely irrelevant. Trust me, we dont’ need administrators; they exist solely to justify their existence. You would not believe the Kafkaesque bureaucracy and sea of waste that pervades our school systems because of administrators and their ties to the board and the state. </p>

<p>I myself am an English teacher (11th grade). I teach in a room with no a/c and no fan in the summer, and then sometimes no heat in the winter (we shiver in our winter coats), and then sometimes a sporadic burst of dry heat that gets the room so hot we have to open the windows (no dial to adjust it). We have no books, and one set of textbooks that are covered in mold with the pages falling out. We have no technology except one old desktop in the class and one old TV for broadcasting announcements in the morning (our only technology). As teachers we have to pay for nearly all our supplies, including pens and tape. </p>

<p>Yet our administrators sit in a/c rooms, with new computers. They are disconnected to the students’ needs to the point where one of them was completely unaware there’d been 8 fights that week, one in which a student knocked down a co-teacher of mine. Many administrators are completely ignorant of the subjects they supervise–my own supervisor was an elementary schoolteacher–she supervises high school English and Math. </p>

<p>And they’re the last to get cut in almost any school. </p>

<p>But to loop this rambling post back to the original, you’ll notice that our school STILL pays for all ec’s. Interesting. I wonder how this varies from region to region?</p>

<p>But I dont’ even know this Ohio district and I’m very saddened by this news.</p>

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<p>At the HS my children attended, EC necessities were funded by the school system while extras were paid for by fundraising. Gate fees went to the school system while concession funds went to the booster group who ran the stand. Homeschooled kids regularly participated in the school’s ec’s.</p>

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<p>I was just talking to parents of a boy from Grove City who played a club sport with my son. Her oldest son now is playing in college, something her daughter hoped to do as well.</p>

<p>They are just so sad…they feel there is a hole in their lives where the fun and excitement of extra curriculars used to be.</p>

<p>Both the son and daughter were A students, both NMSF commended, both play an instrument, and both are superb athletes.</p>

<p>Daughter did not get to play her sport this fall. </p>

<p>The club system is set up to play when the high school sport is not in season. There is an Ohio high school athletic association rule that prohibits more than 5 players on a soccer team from playing together on a club team in the off seasons, and so clubs are very careful not to take too many students from any one high school when they hold their tryouts.</p>

<p>So there is no club structure for high school students to play in during what is the high school season. All of her club team mates are occupied playing for their high schools. So she goes to their games to watch and cheer them on.</p>

<p>She has worked out/trained with her club to the degree she could, but with younger, less skilled players. Not the same.</p>

<p>The daughter still practices her instrument at home and has continued private music lessons. But she says it is the sports that she misses the most. She misses playing for her team. She misses going to her friends’ teams’ games and cheering. She misses the school spirit. She misses the positive structure in her life and finds she has an awful lot of free hours to fill, where she used to have her practices and games, and her friends field hockey and volleyball and football games, not to mention the plays and concerts.</p>

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<p>The voters finally passed the SWCS tax levy that will allow the district to reinstate HS sports. </p>

<p>This morning I was blessed to meet one football player that attended SWCS until he transfered into my son’s school this fall. He is a serious Div I recruit. This young man (age 18) chose to leave his parents home and move into a one bedroom efficiency in order to play his senior year of football. Our district does not allow opened enrollment. Not only did he leave his parents, he left behind his best friend (twin brother). How heart wrenching it would be if my children had to make that tough decision. </p>

<p>You can find a two part video story on Youtube presented by Bryant Gumble. Not sure if the link is permitted so I will give you the title: “HBO Real Sports Segment on SWCS Issue 47”. </p>

<p>Now that the levy has passed, this young man will transfer back home as soon as his football season is over. This is unfortunate for our school and community. The young man I met today has been a wonderful student, friend to many, polite gentleman, christian and role model. I wish him all the best as he returns to his family. There is no doubt, he will have a successful life.</p>

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<p>Congratulations to the students, parents, and all supporters of the tax hike. My best wishes that the district now will make better use of the funds than they did in the past. Students will soon have new opportunities to prove themselves as student-athletes, student-musicians, and all programs soon to be offered to students. They have opportunities now for a more well-rounded education. I hope all the test scores will rise. If that occurs, this tax money was well spent.</p>