Paying for High School Sports

In today’s local paper, there was an article about how over 800 local teachers were receiving pink slips and could potentially be let go if the school district can’t figure out how to find extra money to pay for them. Several months ago, there was some uproar about students paying for extra curricular activities including sports. Apparently there is a California state law that guarantees all students a free education and this includes sports.

So, we as taxpayers can’t ask athletes to pay for anything including uniforms, insurance, transportation fees, etc. To me, this doesn’t seem like it is in the spirit of the law; the state is trying to provide students a base education to succeed. Instead of cutting teachers and classes, wouldn’t it make sense to completely cut sports and let athletes find a way to pay for them?

I understand that sports are the main focus of some high school students, but shouldn’t academics be key? The law is supposed to give equal access to all students regardless of ability to pay. I’d like to see the law amended to exclude non-essentials activities and get athletes to pay their own way; I suspect that most students can afford them, just maybe don’t want to afford them. How many of them have cell phones (monthly fees add up)? How many waste money on Starbucks? How many have iPods?

Let’s get our priorities right and put education first and get rid of this misuse of education funding.

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