Yup. Spent high school in a relatively large city with dozens of high schools, had stadiums galore, and temp classrooms in porta-buildings that leaked all winter and sweltered in the spring and summer and most of the fall. No money to pay teachers aids, no COLA raises for educators, but somehow the football stadium screen got an upgrade regularly and shiny new jerseys and helmets for the sportos.
Sports in education is a cancer. (source: see NCAA.)
In my high school, the auditorium where we did school plays was falling apart. You literally couldn’t sit in a quarter of the seats. Meanwhile, the football team got a new private changing room with a jacuzzi.
We once got a $250 lumber budget for building sets rejected (with the rationale that we could just reuse the sets from last year, even though that was a totally different play from a different time period, nevermind completely disassembled). Meanwhile, the cheerleading squad was issued matching tracksuits with their names embroidered, including on the duffle bag it came in. Sports sucks up huge amounts of money from school budgets, and everyone else is left to fight over the rest.
Yup. Spent high school in a relatively large city with dozens of high schools, had stadiums galore, and temp classrooms in porta-buildings that leaked all winter and sweltered in the spring and summer and most of the fall. No money to pay teachers aids, no COLA raises for educators, but somehow the football stadium screen got an upgrade regularly and shiny new jerseys and helmets for the sportos.
Sports in education is a cancer. (source: see NCAA.)
In my high school, the auditorium where we did school plays was falling apart. You literally couldn’t sit in a quarter of the seats. Meanwhile, the football team got a new private changing room with a jacuzzi.
We once got a $250 lumber budget for building sets rejected (with the rationale that we could just reuse the sets from last year, even though that was a totally different play from a different time period, nevermind completely disassembled). Meanwhile, the cheerleading squad was issued matching tracksuits with their names embroidered, including on the duffle bag it came in. Sports sucks up huge amounts of money from school budgets, and everyone else is left to fight over the rest.