Same with our high school campus. PSHS '87 State Champs. Yay.
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not exactly. i don’t know what the situation is in mckineey, the home of the $70 million stadium but in my school district the team won two back to back state championships before the bond issue that built the stadium and has had two more along with appearances in the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals as well. it wasn’t a matter of “build it and they will win” it was more a matter of they were winning so it was built.
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the aspect i was thinking of was ticket prices, sports fees, and the like. people seem to be okay with that sort of thing as opposed to a tax. even though in both cases they’re spending money that theoretically goes to schooling.
i’d be kind of curious to know how much a big stadium puts a district on the hook for future costs. building it is just step one. repairs and maintenance have got to be exorbitant, and unless those costs are “locked off” from the rest of the school’s budget i could imagine it stealing funds down the line.
i’m confident they are complex enough to be beyond any person’s understanding – myself included. my point is just that when you put one thing so far beyond any other, it’s going to have consequences.
personally, i think it’s nuts that our school funding system is setup such that these sorts of things are even possible ( esp. when there are so many schools, in texas and elsewhere, in need of serious funds ) – that said, it’s their school district and arguably their money, so really who am i to say?
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maintenance and upkeep are just part of the general district budget for maintenance and upkeep of all structures. i don’t think it really requires that much greater costs in those areas than a large school does.
Exactly this. Admittedly, there is some learning-related value to taking part in extra-curricular activities, even these ones. But the trade-off is nowhere close to even for the majority who don’t make it to the pros.
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What do you think is the purpose of formal education to the age of majority?
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Well, according to anecdotes I’ve heard from most of the Midwest and Rockies, it’s to space out time and offer opportunities for napping between sports practice sessions. /s
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maybe. 12,000 seats implies a lot of wear and tear. i would bet that’s the first place tickets and concessions would go tho, so yeah: maybe that part of things would pay for itself. ( plus or minus the property taxes that land would probably generate if put to other uses. )
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I dunno. Thinking about my high school band of the about 25 or so students that were in my class there are six that play music as their profession. One is even employed by the US Army Fife and Drum Corp, which is about forty of the best in the nation.
I’m not even counting me, who turned to an alternative performing arts career and the vast majority of the rest are still interested in music or keep up piano for their kids or something.
Don’t discount the arts, even if you don’t continue them professionally the student’s lives are still enriched and expanded.
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I don’t think there is a purpose, there are many.
Number one though I think is to learn social skills. You may or may not need to know which President was #6 and which was #7 or what biggest components of the Latvian economy are, but you will need to know how to work with others.
Completely disagreed. My high school’s marching/concert bands were award winning, and I know a bunch of kids who went on to study composition, band direction, or became professional instrumentalists in orchestras. I taught classes for a bit, myself. And myself and others like me kept playing in college and can now play a musical instrument, which is a pretty fine skill to have as an adult.
You’re also discounting the hard-to-quantify parts of involvement in the arts. I was a nerdy antisocial dork in middle and high school but played trombone very well, and became first chair as well as squad leader of the low brass in our marching band. I grew up a lot and learned some serious leadership & responsibility skills. And when I took some silly art classes as filler in my science-heavy schedule, I discovered that I liked to draw a whole lot more than I liked to do formulas, which led to me doing what I now do professionally.
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It isn’t Texas High School Football, this is Size envy with their rival Allen and their mega shrine to football.
Seventy million dollars would have been enough to buy the entirety of my high school many, many times over. And it was a large school with a legacy location on top-dollar land.
A high school spending seventy million dollars on anything is batshit insane.
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I disagree in part with you on some of those points.
70% of the membership of the marching band graduated high school, got through college in 4~5 years, and is holding down professional jobs that above and beyond clears the “barely pay the rent” threshold.
I don’t doubt that the Football players, Cheerleaders, and drill team do fall into your barely able to pay rent, but that’s because they were “athletes first, students second” and were shepherded by understanding academic counselers into classes that they can muster the grades to not be in danger of “no pass, no play”.
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and @Hasteur as well…
I appreciate your points, but I’m wondering how similar or different your high schools were to the kind of school that convinces tax payers to pony up $70M for a football stadium.
A well-rounded high school which emphasizes solid education plus the arts plus good sportsmanship (and, I would argue, a good vocational track as well) is going to turn out young adults with the ability to do well in a wide variety of work. That’s what we want, as tax payers and citizens. That’s not what many school districts offer anymore.
Looking back, my high school was surprisingly well rounded, it’s true. We had an internationally-award-winning concert band program, an IBM-funded computer program, a high quality AP program for academics, a vocational track, and a popular sports team. So I definitely benefitted from that sort of balance.
My dad used to teach high school (not at my school), and every time a school levy was defeated, they’d threaten parents by removing more and more extracurricular programs – though not football, of course – and parents shrugged. So the next time a levy failed, the school discontinued football AND all school buses. Shockingly the money flowed in.
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Suprisingly, very similar as I went to school in the district not 5 miles down the road that ponied up $60 million for initial stadium construction and annother 20ish million for fixing the stadium after it was structurally dangerous after 2 years. This stadium is what caused the school district in the link to have size envy and demand their own mega stadium.
At this point the Texas HS football playoffs can be held in the Dallas area between Mesquite Memorial, Eagle Stadium (Allen), Mustang Stadium (Southern Methodist University), and Cowboy Stadium in Arlington.
You mean, working on spec and getting fired before you’re paid?
It’s a living!
#:-P
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It’s a facility that’s shared amongst a half dozen high schools in the district,
Ahhh, salt in the wounds is better than coffee in the morning, I always say
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