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By no means am I singling out athletics or saying that it should be completely eliminated. All I am suggesting is that perhaps the extremes to which we go now (and spend money on athletics) may have gotten to be a bit excessive. Maybe we don't need to be busing the junior varsity field hockey team 80 miles round-trip across town on a Wednesday night to play a game.
So should we do away with National History Day also? The FL History Fair will be held in Tallahassee (250 miles from Orlando, 480 miles from Miami) May 5-7. The kids miss two days of school, must be transported to Tallahassee (which is far from many parts of the state) and must be fed while they are there. It costs a lot more money to send a child to the FL History Fair than to transport kids across town on a Wednesday.
There seems to be a very vocal group of people who are anti sports. I do not understand why any educator would want to take opportunities away from students. Taking sports (or any other activity) out of the schools takes opportunities away from the kids who need it most. Rich kids like mine will certainly have their parents pay for their activities. But what about the rest of the kids?
The whole idea of any school activity is to open the door of choices and identify the interests for the student. An interest for life may blossom from athletics, along with health and the condition of/knowledge of your own body. But the same could be said of high school shop: foundry, plastics, drafting, machine shop, wood, auto, and crafts. If you have science you need algrebra; if you have journalism you need English.
Eliminating sports would widen the gap even further between private/high income schools and everyone else left to play catch up on their own.
You have a limited time (up until about 28) to lay down the calcium in your bones that you will need all your life. Athletics profoundly affects that, and in the case of the USA don't even get me started on obesity.
The way the system of 'public education' is set up is unsustainable, just like every other system we've overloaded and complicated. Let it crumble upon itself.
From reading your posts (and correct me if I'm wrong), but it appears that most of your argument is built around the problems with making football into a recreation sport. And admittedly, that would easily be the most difficult one to switch.
Except for the transportation issue (which is actually a good one that I didn't think of), I think a lot of the other points you're making could easily be accounted for. In fact, in some regions of the country, non-scholastic athletic competition is run just as well, on as just a high level, as scholastic counterparts. I believe that if scholastic competition were eliminated, a lot of the focus, resources, and funds would make their way to an alternative model.
While football is definitely the most visible sport and often brings in the biggest crowds and money, it's not in the forefront of my personal thoughts. However, it is the biggest reason taking sports out of school will never happen in Texas. For sure.
The only sport my son plays is baseball. To take that away from the school environment in high school would be so costly that very few boys could continue to play. One thing that I don't think you are taking into consideration is the cost to pay the salary of the coach and others needed to put out a competitive team. you need at the very least 2 coaches. Head baseball coaches around here currently make at least $55,000 and assistants $53,000. Even if you have a Freshman, Junior Varsity and Varsity teams with 20 players each, that comes out to a minimum of $1800 of salary per player. Sure, some can be offset with fundraisers, including concession sales, and ticket sales, however the teams will likely have to pay rent to the facility, pay the umpires for each game and pay for a trainer and equipment handler as well. Additionally parents would have to pay for all the uniforms, and team equipment that the schools normally supply.
I know that I, as a parent, could not even come close to paying those kinds of monies, get him where he needs to be when he needs to be there to play baseball.
Oh yeah forgot about the organization that currently governs all athletics in Texas - UIL - that has very specific rules for all sports.....that would have to go away and some privately sponsored/supported/owned or what have you would have to govern sports instead. lol
While football is definitely the most visible sport and often brings in the biggest crowds and money, it's not in the forefront of my personal thoughts. However, it is the biggest reason taking sports out of school will never happen in Texas. For sure.
The only sport my son plays is baseball. To take that away from the school environment in high school would be so costly that very few boys could continue to play. One thing that I don't think you are taking into consideration is the cost to pay the salary of the coach and others needed to put out a competitive team. you need at the very least 2 coaches. Head baseball coaches around here currently make at least $55,000 and assistants $53,000. Even if you have a Freshman, Junior Varsity and Varsity teams with 20 players each, that comes out to a minimum of $1800 of salary per player. Sure, some can be offset with fundraisers, including concession sales, and ticket sales, however the teams will likely have to pay rent to the facility, pay the umpires for each game and pay for a trainer and equipment handler as well. Additionally parents would have to pay for all the uniforms, and team equipment that the schools normally supply.
I know that I, as a parent, could not even come close to paying those kinds of monies, get him where he needs to be when he needs to be there to play baseball.
Oh yeah forgot about the organization that currently governs all athletics in Texas - UIL - that has very specific rules for all sports.....that would have to go away and some privately sponsored/supported/owned or what have you would have to govern sports instead. lol
Coaches make $55K per year just to coach? Around here it is more like $3,000 for coaching. Teachers who coach might make $55K if you count their teaching salary plus the coaching stipend but they don't make $55K just for coaching. WOW.
So all of that stuff couldn't simply happen under the umbrella of local recreation programs? I still don't see why it has to be affiliated with schools.
if you look back at the history of scholastic sports governing bodies many of them were developed by the public universities in their states i.e. Texas and South Carolina. South Carolina's governing body was originally housed on the USC campus in Columbia.
I mention that VERY brief history to explain that since college's in the post civil war era turned to athletics as a means to show superiority and or dominance over one another, in the 20th century that trickled down into the secondary ranks and so on and so forth.
Recreation depts in my experience don't have the necessary budgets the same way public and private schools do to operate massive athletic programs.
i think its easier to run these sports programs out of a school simply because a school represents a community as that single entity. as such the community rallies around the school and its athletic programs as means to symbolize all that is good with that community.
Coaches make $55K per year just to coach? Around here it is more like $3,000 for coaching. Teachers who coach might make $55K if you count their teaching salary plus the coaching stipend but they don't make $55K just for coaching. WOW.
Some yes or so the story goes. Some of the gross stories out of Texas are mildly true.....maybe not 100% accurate but relatively true. However, In my experience it is head football positions that are being paid those salaries and not your head baseball coaches. Even baseball academy instructors aren't making that kind of money.
I don't think coaches teaching is some new phenomenon. In the stone ages of the 1980s in NY all of our coaches were teachers. What they taught depended on their educational background. Was this not the case in the rest of the country?
my father switched his major in the late 1960s from history to english due to the fact that his mentor his freshman year of college asked him what coaching path he wanted to take. he had no desire at the time to coach high school athletics so he opted to teach english. his mentor explained to him that if he wanted to teach history he'd have to coach. a guy i coach wrestling with, his father who is a retired PE teacher who began teaching in the late 60s said that you couldn't get a PE job back then unless you coached year round, fall winter and spring. i teach at a school where one year we had 2 PE teachers who coached nothing at the school. clocked in, taught, clocked out, went home. 30-40 years ago that would've never happened.
in some states these days you'll be hard pressed to find "in house" coaches. in Ohio it can be difficult for an athletic director to make athletic hires when there are zero teaching staff openings or when the district is downsizing its staff.
We didn't have the NCLB and highly qualified teachers who had to take cert tests in their subject area.
In the past I have seen coaches teaching the electives.
IMHO it hurts the classes when the coaches are out to attend district, regional, state events so much.
I have nothing against coaches mind you. But we also have declining academic achievement in the core areas of reading and math.
I see why schools do it..they have to manage budgets and this is one way to do it.
I just don't like the way they are going about it, that's all. And I could be biased based on what I've seen happen at the couple of schools I sub in.
In my 9 years of teaching I've only ever heard of one English / Language Arts Teacher coaching and that was a head football coach at a prestigious catholic high school in Cleveland, Ohio. Rarely and I mean RARELY do you see English teachers as coaches.
Teachers had to be certified when I went to school in the 1980s. In fact, you used to have to be a certified teacher to be a coach. It was many years after I graduated that NY changed the law to allow non teachers to coach. I just don't think this is anything new. People who wanted to coach usually got a degree that would allow them to have a regular teaching job and then coached for additional income.
I don't know what coaches make in your state but here in FL they do not make a lot of money. Eliminating coaching stipends will not save that much money. Missing school for district (1 day), regional (1 day) and maybe state (2 days) is not that disruptive. Teachers also miss school if they coach debate, math team, history day, robotics, etc.....Why is it only a big deal if athletic coaches miss class?
Students fundraise for many of the extras that are provided for athletic and non athletic activities. Many people from the outside see what is provided and assume that the school districts are providing it all from their budgets. However, extras are usually provided through fundraising. The teams charge admission fees. For non athletic activities there are other fundraisers (car washes, selling candy, etc.)
In my experience coaches are some of the staff members who miss the fewest days.
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