Dear Editor,<\/p>\n
What is behind the push to merge high school sports teams in New York State? We know our governor wants school consolidation and this may be just one part of his agenda to make this a reality. I don\u2019t suppose how the various communities feel about this matters much in Albany, but I suspect it does to those affected by it. Losing whatever control people still have over making decisions that affect them and their children is not something many people embrace. Bigger is not necessarily better.<\/p>\n
Up until now schools have competed in sports using a formula that took into consideration the number of students in each school to determine \u201cfairness\u201d in competition. Based on student population a maximum was assigned to the schools with the smallest enrollments all the way up to the largest. They were broken into five classifications, with \u201cD\u201d being the smallest and \u201cAA\u201d the largest. This gave each school no obvious advantage over another. <\/p>\n
However, now something has come along that does give a significant advantage to some. It encourages schools to merge and negates the old formula based on student populations used to determine classification. As a result, they are able to compete in the same classification as before, even though their student numbers exceed the old maximum allowed. This applies to \u201cD,\u201d \u201cC\u201d and \u201cB\u201d schools and the \u201ctool\u201d that makes this possible is a new rule that, somehow, manipulates the numbers by 20 percent, 30 percent or 40 percent for those \u201cD,\u201d \u201cC\u201d and \u201cB\u201d schools who choose to merge. So much for \u201cfair play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Public schools are already at a disadvantage when it comes to competing with catholic and private schools, who are not limited to district boundaries and can literally recruit any athlete they want. Now those who invest in their own kids and build their own programs are at a crossroad. Is this the \u201cnew\u201d American way? Do we discourage independence, perseverance, dedication, sacrifice and loyalty to embrace government subsidy? I hope not. <\/p>\n
If combining the student numbers of schools who merge sports teams and having them play in the classifications, based on the old formula, makes \u201ctoo much sense,\u201d how about this? The point system to determine playoffs already encourages teams to play better competition, so shouldn\u2019t extra bonus points be awarded teams who defeat merged teams who have been allowed to remain in their old classification? It still isn\u2019t \u201cfair,\u201d but it does provide a chance to earn extra playoff points. <\/p>\n
Doesn\u2019t everyone love stories of the \u201cunderdog\u201d who overcomes nearly impossible odds or goes down in a \u201cblaze of glory\u201d trying (Rocky, Miracle, The Alamo). I can live with this, as long as it is understood that this new system is heavily weighted in favor of those schools that choose to merge.<\/p>\n
Knowing in advance that many of their victories will be \u201ctainted\u201d by the stain of \u201cfavoritism\u201d should be their \u201ccross to bear,\u201d as a result of the unfair advantage given them, and the fact they were willing to trade their independence for it.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Doug Graves<\/p>\n
Tioga Center, N.Y.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Editor, What is behind the push to merge high school sports teams in New York State? We know our governor wants school consolidation and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"yoast_head":"\n