Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/02/texas-high-school-football-sta.html
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Why so expensive???
I blame the teachers union.
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When I lived in the Texas, our Towns 5A Football stadium was often mistaken for a college stadium by visitors.
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But football and Jesus and something something…
I really wish this pic wasn’t so useful.
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With the average teacher’s salary in Texas being about $52,000, that equates to the yearly wages of 1,346 new teachers. Or say 100 new teachers for over thirteen years.
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SMFH
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Well if they’ve got it line-itemed in the school budget, and it’s balanced with similar fiscal support for academics, enrichment, social skills, health education, special needs, and community involvement…gee, why would anyone object…
That must be some affluent community…
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Wikipedia says that the Berry Center in Cy-Fair ISD cost 84 million. Are they discounting this stadium because it has multiple purposes?
An interesting fact about Texas high school stadiums: The school is legally obligated to build another building of the same cost for educational purposes. So they’re getting a library or art complex or something else as well.
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Can they claim that they’ll host concerts or something in the stadium during the off season to satisfy that legal obligation? [Whether or not they will actually use it for concerts is another question entirely.]
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Nope. Has to be an actual other building (or, likely in this case, buildings)
Otherwise I can’t think of why we built a 25 million dollar theatre complex for a high school that is better than a lot of colleges.
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I’ve never heard that before.
The football program at my kids high school is extremely well supported. Almost all of that support comes from the community though and so academics aren’t really in competition with athletics for funding.
I always thought the big football program was pretty stupid. The games at the high school almost feel like a big college game. Since then, my opinion has evolved a bit. They do a pretty good job of involving a lot of kids. The marching band is hundreds of kids, the national anthem is sung by choir kids, there are lots of different cheer squads, and kids running booths and managing things. On football day, there’s definitely a lot of energy and excitement at the school and tickets for the game raise quite a bit of money. I don’t quite understand why so many people are so crazy for football (I’m a baseball guy myself), but the community aspect of it is pretty nice.
In the end, it’s up to that community. If they are willing to pay more taxes for the next 20 years or so, good for them. In my community, I think it would be a pretty easy sell.
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All of those other schools are being stupid so we have to be stupid too! You don’t want our kids left out of the stupid pool, do you?
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If all your other friends built a football stadium, would you build one too?
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How old is your stadium though. McKinney, for example, has a 220 million bond for this stadium, to cover the costs of the other building, an “events center” that will be shared with three schools.
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It’s 6 years old now. It is not as nice as the proposed stadium this story is talking about and judging by how hard tickets can be to get, I’m thinking they underestimated what they would need.
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Yeah, you just missed the window.
texas teacher here in a district with a multiple state championship winning football team. when we built our massive stadium it was the 4th most expensive stadium in the state. now it isn’t even in the top 20. anyway, our stadium is used to host playoff games in the post-season. it’s also used to host track meets. those uses of the stadium pay for the entire athletic budget for the district each year. ticket sales and concessions for the football games pay for our theater arts department, our band transportation, and 10% of our district technology budget. this only works because we tend to have a strong football team and get into the playoffs in most years. this wouldn’t work if we had a crap team.
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IIRC my highschool spent a large portion of its budget on turf, approximately 23 million IIRC, on turf. We frequently had paper shortages.
However I do have to say I like Chesterfield’s point about football providing lots of opportunities to students, like the band and cheer squads and stuff. I never got into those things, partly due to a lack of transportation, partly due to disinterest in sports. I often wonder how many kids don’t join extra-curricular programs because they can’t get there or can’t get home, and if it is a thing, then I feel like its a thing that needs to be addressed.
EDIT: I suppose bands do get transportation, as do cheer squads, but for my question stands for non-sports activities.
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Sure, Big Football Games in Texas can pay for other stuff. So, on one level, spending a bunch of money on a football stadium could make sense.
Doesn’t change that Football is a machine for generating brain injuries in young children.
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