cometdad wrote:Let's list the advantages - I personally am asking our school board to petition the NDHSAA to push the large city parochial teams out of the B and a list of advantages will help.
1. Private schools typically have more affluent parents that do send their kids through the AAU programs.
2. Large city college programs are allowing kids whose parents are donors to practice with their teams (the three New Town girls are practicing up at Mary and even had a chunk of the U of Mary team at the region championship cheering them on. I know the Hansted boys also practiced with DSU - that's class A but shows that this isn't an isolated instance of one college).
3. Immediate access to the acceleration programs offered by the major medical facilities in cities.
4. Transfers - I don't believe there is recruiting and think we class B towns shoot our own arguments in the foot by this always being the first topic raised. There are definitely well documented transfer problems at Shiloh though and it's a given that they weren't transferred for "faith based" schooling.
5. Money spent on sports programs by the parochial schools (and not just on facilities). If you look at the Shiloh/Ryan/Oak Grove schedules you'll notice that they'll travel great distances to play stiffer competition. The schools in our district are even consolidating boys/girls games into one night to try and keep travel costs down so that they can live within the tax bases budget.
6. Money spent on coaching - Shiloh has 4 coaches and the small towns in our district budget for 2. We had three this year but only because our elementary coach did it for free while trying to gain some high school experience.
There is some real animosity growing, at least in our region, about this problem and I was ecstatic that Sherm Sylling was on hand to witness the ABS (Anyone But Shiloh) sentiment that has taken over. Since he's retiring I hope he is passing it on to the other board members. Grant County had a great sign that went something like "home grown talent - small town pride" and all the other communities in the region were cheering on the Coyotes. Any other advantages people can give would definitely be appreciated and I'll post my letter to the Underwood school board in case anyone else wants to use it to encourage their board to speak up.
So what's the difference between a private school and schools like Surrey, DLB, Velva, Sawyer, Max, Thompson, Kindred, Casselton, New England on points 2 and 3? Once again anyone can transfer to a public school too. I can't speak for Shiloh having four coaches but I know a lot of assistant coaches who work for free or are college kids that make $200 throughout the year. A lot of coaches doesn't always equal big budget