Budget Cuts looming for Track & Field

Today town-funded school systems are coming to grips with reduced tax revenues when many smaller education jurisdictions used to feel insulated from statewide or city budget woes.   The post-Aught decade reality is not what educators, parents and students want to hear.   First cuts have dealt blows to construction plans but now programs that had been immune to cuts are on the education chopping block.   Now the debate grows louder:  are sports important to the education and well-being of our girls and boys in high school?

Last year in Fairfax County Virginia, students, parents and coaches formed an alliance to convince the School Board that eliminating indoor track was simply the wrong message to send to students and the country.   Here was the 2^nd wealthiest county in the United States saying that indoor track and field was not necessary.   It is a sport that attracts more participants than all other sports save one.   Indoor track does not cut anyone.   No cuts, anyone can participate.   Doesn’t that sound like a welcoming bell to education?   The other message being sent:   getting fit and becoming healthier takes a back seat to all other elements of education.   In the end, the Fairfax School Board took a dose of educational medicine and preserved indoor track.   Do you think this feeling would last?  [FEB 4:  Action in Fairfax County:  School Board votes to institute $100 per athlete per sport system in 2011 with a family cap per year of approx $450]

Speed ahead to the fall of 2009.  State budgets show a less than expected revenue stream.   The solution is simple:  raise revenues or impose budget cuts.   In California fees rose.  Fines for traffic violations skyrocketed.   All attempts were made to avoid severe budget and service cuts.   What about education funding?   Where was the fat?   Was there any left to shave or cut?   Most towns, counties or state governments looked at ways to increase revenues while instituting cuts.   One idea that has surfaced:  a fee to play or participate in extracurricular activities and sports.  

Pay to play.   It sounds better than “no pay and no play”.   There are some troubling elements of the pay to play option in schools.   One can only envision a school’s sports roster filled with athletes who are used to paying for club sports or recreation leagues.   What happens to families or single parent athletes who do not have the available funds to “play”?   Do we create a fund that permits those students who meet an approved “needs basis” to receive grants to play?   How is the fund administered?   Can a system be fair to student athletes who do not have the means to pay?

Solutions to these questions of funding a “pay to play” sports registration system are not easy.   Easy left us behind several years ago.   Today, parents, educators and athletes need to come together to ensure that physical education, high school sports endure.   High school sports and the resulting fitness and health benefits are a necessary aspect of high school.  

Here is a call for each of us to assist our local school system to keep high school sports and physical education part of who we are as a community.   We can all share some of the painful budget reductions, yet it is not a solution to single out one or two sports to bear the brunt of cuts or elimination.