Large Public High Schools

Parents Forum
21

<p>edad,</p>

<p>rec sports are sports with volunteer coaches where anyone can sign up to play. There might be people who are brand new to the sport, but that usually ends after elementary school. Where I live there are a couple rec sports teams per age group in soccer, and we get together with other towns near us, so the league has like 40 or 50 teams. You then play a season of games, and they divide it into divisions for a tournament, where they put all the best teams together, and all the worst teams together, so the games are competitive.</p>

<p>Club sports will likely draw from a larger area, require a bigger chunk of time, and they will have tryouts. Anyone can tryout for the team between seasons, and there's a maximum number of players the league allows you to have, so there is always the danger of your kid losing their spot on the team. If this happens, they will look for another club team, or play in the rec league. Club teams pay coaches (sometimes thousands of dollars), and there is heavy emphasis on winning.</p>

<p>I could see however, if you don't live in a heavily populated area, that these options might not exist in the same capacity, and in that case maybe high school sports should be open to everyone. However, if the high school team is going to be competitive, there will still be people who are on the team but don't play, because they are going to play the best players.</p>

22

<p>My oldest two graduated from a school with 4,000 students. It was two high schools consolidated into one. Half the spots (sports, academic teams, etc..) and twice the kids. It's not working out. The community is looking into making it three high schools. They start with 1,200 freshmen and about another 250 "retreads" in the freshman class. Less than 700 will graduate four years later. </p>

<p>There has been a large exodous to private schools, transfers in the area, homeschooling and people like us who flat out moved. We are now in a district that has 1,200 students, 320 of them at the high school. My younger two have many more opportunities to participate in a variety of things, and the graduation rate is 100%. This is 14 miles to the north of the old district in a rural area. There is actually more school spirit.</p>