Private School Sports programs regularly compete with Public School sports programs, but arguments about advantages on either side often take focus off the sports themselves.
In a recent Sun Sentinel article, one author discussed her opinion on what the real problem is with Private School vs. Public School sports.
It’s something high school sports fans have argued for years. But with private school St. Thomas Aquinas in the spotlight as the nation’s No. 1 football team, the conversation has picked up steam.
I can’t begin to count the number of e-mails, blog comments or story comments I’ve read over the past year saying private schools have no business competing against public schools.
The only problem with most of those messages is the focus is misplaced.
It’s not a public vs. private, haves vs. have-nots issue.
It’s a transfer issue.
The auhor goes on to talk about the transfers of students from one school to another without actually moving addresses. Essentially, students are being recruited from one school to another because of thier athletic ability.
Critics claim that’s where private schools have their biggest advantage. They can get students from pretty much anywhere, right?
Well, the problem with that argument is public schools do the same thing.
In Broward, there’s freedom to move within the school system. Magnet programs offer students the opportunity to attend schools outside their residential boundaries.
The solution proposed in the article was,
The best way to stop any school from gaining an unfair advantage is to regulate transfers.
Unless you can prove a legitimate hardship, if you’ve changed schools without a change of address, you sit out or play at the junior varsity level.
While the definition of ‘hardship’ can be highly objective, it is a wonder that one very simple point was left out of the argument. If a student athlete is offered a better education in exchange for switching teams, is that really a bad thing? Do they need to prove that their current education is sub-standard in order to qualify for transfer under the proposed solution, or is it enough for them to just want a better education, no matter where it is?
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