lazarus

"So, you are saying that only 1 in 4 public school athletes graduate and are eligible to attend college? I have a hard time believing that figure." you have found boiled coach way out on a skinny branch of logic. he is referring to the imaginary athletes he has assigned to the public schools... the half of the students not making adequate grades to participate, which he assumes to contain a set % of great athletes, the 50% of the remaining kids who dont participate in anything, which he assumes to contain a set % of possible college prospects, and, for all i know, the home-schoolers, private-schoolers, and dropouts, who never even grace the halls of their local public school... got to be crawling with potential hall-of-famers. i think it is analagous to counting every kid within 30 miles of your school, deciding what percent would be D-1 prospects, and then saying that you have more d-1 prospects than you have students. speaking for the actual athletes at our school; most of them graduate (that is a point of emphasis with every coach in every program at our school) and the majority would be eligible to play in college. very, very few are good enough. every now and then we produce an naia or d-3 athlete. 3 years ago we had a kid sign a d-2 scholarship. it was a big deal. bc's imaginary athletes may make him happy, but they havent done us a lot of good.

read the article. you are waaaay too fragile. the criticism (or maybe just more of a statement of fact) was directed at "we".

thank you itchme, for finally making the much alluded to letters available. my opinion would be that they are not the same thing. the BA letter is inviting the kids to spring practice, in early may, while they are still in attendance at their previous school. the riverdale letter is inviting them to the start of practice for the upcoming season, in late july, when they are no longer attending their previous school.

"If a coach told this to ANY player" i think IF is the operative word here... this is an anonymous internet posting of a parent's version, of a child's version, of something a coach said.... probably. at best, it has been thru 2 levels of slanting (and/or embellishment). at worst, it has been outright fabricated. the chances that the player was actually told this are almost nil.

catfresh, i think you misunderstood me. i wasnt criticizing the coaches, i was making fun of the fellow who did and referenced the statements of "fans and parents" to support his criticism.

"I heard many of the parents and fans saying the same things I am throughout the whole game." those opinions are probably not worth as much as you paid for them.

"so you are saying some do which in Baldcoach's words you are calling privates cheaters." memphis tigers, i believe that SOME people with the privates "cheat", just like i believe that SOME people with publics "cheat". i suspect that our rather fuzzy recruiting rule is stretched, bent, interpreted, and twisted beyond recognition by any number of people, all of whom feel perfectly justified in their actions.... kind of like you and boiled coach stretch, bend, interpret, and twist one another's words so you can feel offended. nobody has a monopoly on human nature.

"There can only be an advantage athletically for small privates if they are intentionally selecting/recruiting athletes from their wide zones" if i agree with this statement (which i dont, by the way) then you are saying that the small privates must be intentionally selecting/recruiting athletes. some advantage(s) exist, the numbers dont lie. i dont believe it is possible that the advantage(s) all come from some huge recruiting conspiracy. i am not saying i dont believe any privates recruit, i just believe an equal percentage of publics would be able to match the effort.

"You have still not answered the question of what Columbia Academy and Zion said about getting dusted by your team!!!!!!!!!!!!!" i believe that zion asked to be moved to D-2

"I remember hearing that every single one of them had been at CPA since kindergarden." did you get that straight from a friend of a friend?

"Ask Laz to check my numbers...he uses Laz-math." the math is simple enough, not sure i understand the logic behind it. i might just not quite understand what you are getting at. it sounds like you start with the premise that all student bodies contain the same percentage of potential college athletes and use that to prove that a student body twice as large has twice as many potential college athletes. the conclusion is really just a restatement of the original premise. however, if the actual result is that the student body twice as large produces only half as many college athletes, that would seem to be a pretty strong indication that the original premise is not correct. laz-math doesnt work the same as baldy-math. baldy-math seems to start with a premise, and follow it thru to its conclusion with little concern for actual results. laz-math simply compiles results and looks for trends sufficient to predict future results. private schools produce far greater numbers of college athletes, and have consistently done so for many years. so laz-math anticipates they will continue to do so.

"I have been told that they redf-shirt the good ones when they are in 7th or 8th grade." that has to be done in the 6th grade. starting with the 7th, a kid has 6 years to play out middle & high school.... they can advance from middle to hs competition at any time, but once they have competed at the hs level in any sport, they are ineligible for further ms competition. i dont know of any schools that currently push for parents to "redshirt" good 6th graders for athletic purposes, altho i know of some from the past. however, there are still parents who do so.

"1. They would have less money to spend per student" since a big chunk of the money, from state and federal funds is allocated per student, the per student money would be a lot less affected than you think. since the money is NOT spent exactly "per student", with a select group of "special needs" students taking the largest amount of the money (students who are not among the private pool you suggest returning) the effect would be even less. "2. They would not have the physical facilities to handle the influx of students" most of them dont have the facilities now. there would just be more portables. "3. The last and most important issue is that the public schools could not handle the parents. The private school parents would demand that standards be raised and they would have the resources to hold everyones feet to the fire. They would very quickly vote most of the school boards out of office (remember they have tuition money that they would no longer be spending & could use for politics) and vote in the same people that have been on the boards of various private schools." as close as i come to having a grievance with private schools. they remove so many of the parents that would demand excellence from public schools. no. 3 is a reason i would WANT you to go back. altho i am not so sure you would vote all the school board members out. as much as i hate to say anything nice about governmental bodies, school board members tend to be among the most intelligent of your elected officials. "It would be total chaos" i thought you were saying something would change?

"Now why in the world would TC only have 30 kids out? Great tradition, undefeated state champs last year, good coaching and community support...what is going on?" thats soooo easy. remember the kids that arent in your "not selective" student body? the kids that cant make the grades, the kids who have discipline problems, the kids whose parents cant afford tuition, the kids whose parents think sports are a waste of time, the kids whose parents just plain dont care? take those kids out of the population, and TC probably has as good a turnout as you do. maybe better. that doesnt mean none of those kids play. some of them manage to overcome the odds and make it. for those kids football really does something worthwhile. it can make a difference in their lives. some of us seem to think it is sufficient to pass judgement on what parents should or shouldnt be, or provide, for their children. some of us feel that we have an obligation to try to do something good for kids that arent getting what they should get.

"Notice he hasn't said how many kids TC had out this year" someone said it earlier... about 30, counting freshmen. not a comparable turnout to those private schools you talked about. i dont know about the others on your list.

"BC is more than capable of speaking for himself, but I believe he was simply trying to point out that a school of the size that was being spoken about cannot operate on a $1 million budget. I think his sketchy figures and estimates for both public and private are sufficient to prove that point, aren't they?" true enough. i didnt need to see any figures to understand that a school is not going to operate on a million dollar budget. but the general direction of the discussion was whether privates had significantly more money to operate their athletic programs. off of very little information, my impression is that they do. mostly i am just curious. (wouldnt you describe me as a curious person)

"Let's look at 2 schools. One is a small private unit school, the other a small public." now this is more my kind of thread. it has numbers (and isnt so danged repetitious as those others!) from here on i am asking honest questions, not challenging you. i really dont know anything about how a private school budgets (public school either for that matter), altho i am not totally ignorant as to budgeting. first the revenues... 200 kids @ 6k ea. i concur with the 1.2 million. what about endowments, investments? is this school running totally hand to mouth? that wouldnt seem like a very smart way to operate, certainly the private schools i am familiar with dont operate that way. if you had a mere 3 million invested and only harvested 5% out of the earnings, leaving the rest to grow your reserves, that would provide another 150 k for your budget. how about gifts/donations? our school is always soliciting alumni & alumni families for donations, & raise a pretty sizeable amount each year. how about the fund-raisers that are often referred to? surely they raise a measurable amount of money, or no one would be doing them. what about school products? t-shirts, jackets, bags, etc. those arent given away or sold at a loss are they? booster clubs, athletic gate, concessions? just off the top of my head, i can think of a lot of revenue sources beyond just tuition. as a private enterprise, i would expect a private school to utilize every possibility for increasing revenues. then expenses. correct me if i am wrong, but i wouldnt think esl requirements are putting much of a burden on your school. nor are you required to provide transportation for all the kids within your zone. free lunches? mainstreaming for handicapped kids? special instructors, sometimes on a one to one basis for the mainstreamed kids? how many personnel are required to run and report on the latest "school improvement" fad programs foisted on you by elected officials? how about alternative school for the... oh, yeah, you kick those kids out. so your school considerably reduces its cost by sending the expensive kids to the maligned public school, and avoiding most of the idiotic costs imposed by government oversight. now as far as staff is concerned, i think you shorted yourself. assuming your 25 person staff is all full-time employees, you need to make some allowance for payroll taxes and benefits. i would not expect your benefits to be as outrageous as those in government, but you still should add at least 15-20% for taxes, health insurance, pto, retirement, unemployment, disability, etc, etc. a certain level of benefits is mandated by law, unless private schools are exempted from wage & labor laws (i really dont know if they are?). surely there are some part-time employees as well. so i think your labor cost is low. (typically people way underestimate what labor will cost). utilities at 1,500 a month also sounds low. i would have expected at least twice that. however, all utilities dont cost the same amount. some areas are cheaper than others, and some types of users get breaks. again, i dont know where private schools fit in? 100k a year for phones & technology, on the other hand, sounds way high. depending on what you mean by technology, i wouldnt expect a school to spend but about a quarter of that. maybe there are requirements that i am not considering? M&R expense would be somewhat dependent on the age and condition of your facilities and assets. i would anticipate that some sort of reserve would be in place to cover major repairs such as a new hvac or roof, so that those wouldnt all fall on a single year's operating budget. the same for replacements for your big-ticket assets? your mortgage note of 18k a month. i take that to mean the school doesnt own any of the property outright? of course debt can be managed to control the monthly outlay, ranging from trying to pay out for ownership over a short period of time to only ever paying the interest. and there would be a lot of variation depending on whether you had some low interest rate locked in, or received a benevolent loan from someone sympathetic to your enterprise. supplies, books, athletics, etc. half a million sounds pretty high. i'd like a little more detail on that. insurance, i would have thought that there would be enough private schools to operate some sort of insurance pool. that would provide some major savings. if no such pool exists... there is a good business opportunity for some enterprising young buck. bottom line. my curiosity is aroused. i'd love to get a look at a real private school budget or two. i'd settle for some amendments or clarification on the figures you have given.

just to make it clear, i didnt post that to cast a shadow on BA. i was shocked to hear it said about BA, because their people have always been so classy in my experience. some of the other things that have been brought up; the priceless rich kids sign would not have been displayed at our school for one minute after anyone in school administration saw it. i wont make any promises about what some of our "adults" or students might do or say, prior to being stopped. but it would be stopped. the statement that parents should not expect the school to keep their kids from acting a fool is the complete opposite of my experience. in public school, if a coach thinks that every kid has been taught how to act at home, that coach is dreaming. i have found that it is wise to let the kids know in advance how they are expected to act towards opponents & officials. some of them have parents who believe their kid should be cussing out officials and taking swings at opponents in every game. it might sound good to say that parents are responsible for teaching kids how to act, but it is not realistic in every situation. i think 'how to act' is one of the important lessons we teach.

i have mulled this over for a couple of days and curiosity has finally gotten the better of me. i cant believe it is true, i just gotta know. a person i know went to watch the BA-shelbyville basketball games. according to him, when the shelbyville teams came into the gym off the bus the BA student body started chanting "here come the poor kids, here come the..." like i say, i have a hard time believing it. every contact i have ever had with BA (admittedly none in many years) the behavior of the students has been impeccable. yet, this is a person with no connection to either team just there to see a ball game. (a private school person no less). i dont have any reason to doubt the story. is there some sort of "history" between shelbyville & BA? has BA completely changed? was this an anomaly & the students got in big trouble? what is the real story? does anyone know more about this?

"Do all D2 privates want to stop giving financial aid to athletes? Do all D2 privates want to limit the number of athletes on financial aid?" the d-2 school my kid attended would leave the tssaa rather than deny some of the students the same opportunities the others have... that includes sports. and financial aid for those who need it is something they believe in. i think very highly of the school and how they approach their mission (altho they arent by any stretch strong in sports)

"We have 3 paid coaches. But we go out and get volunteers. Why couldn't the schools who don't have many coaches do the same?" we do. heck, i'm a volunteer. but the pool is pretty limited. people with experience in the sport arent that plentiful, those with any coaching background even less so. then they have to have the time/job that will allow them off for the coaching and be willing/able to take the class and pass the test. if killing hogs or suckering tobacco were vital skills we'd have it made. i know our coaches would take any warm body that would do it... i am living proof! "Because then they wouldn't have another excuse for whining and complaining. Its easier to complain and whine, than to give time." i grew up in norman & think you should change your name to txnative.

so many questions; first, i dont think i have been among those accusing the privates as a whole of doing anything to win. cant promise as far as every statement in every context, but i hope that isnt the impression i have given. my position on classification issues has nothing to do with the favorable opinion i have of private schools. second, i dont think it is noble to dismiss a student for zero tolerance violations. i dont believe a student should be put out unless the safety of that student or others becomes an issue. third, i might have misinterpreted what was said. if the players were dismissed from the team, or the school. my impression was that they were being put out of the school. certainly sports privileges have to be treated as privileges. the desire to play sports is often the only effective carrot we have to get kids thru school. if it didnt require them to do what it takes to get thru school, it wouldnt serve any purpose at all. if they are putting kids out of school because they struggle academically, or have personal problems, then i question the mission of the schools. what is the point of only helping those who dont need help? if it helps understand my perspective any, i was one of those kids who would have been given up on.

"(all blowouts over privates)" i havent seen all the games, but i wouldnt characterize yesterday's gp game as a blowout. for most of the game, goodpasture marched up and down the field but didnt score, and did a pretty good job on defense except for giving up a couple of big plays that did account for scores. the lopsided score came late when gp had to do the desperation stuff. if gp completes a couple of drives and doesnt give up a couple of big plays it would have been a completely different ball game.

"And btw..I do believe public schools will kick kids out too." true... for bringing a weapon or drugs to school, or for criminal offenses like theft or assault (depending on the severity). i am not familiar with jcm, do they customarily kick kids out because they are academically behind or have a kid?

"Most of you have heard about the kid that was ruled ineligible at Milan. He was a transfer from USJ. Good football player who started at Milan the moment he got there. He`s around 6`5 280. He attended USJ for most all his school years. Had an older brother that graduated from there and a younger brother that`s still in school there. Why did he transfer? Because the school felt like he had just fallen too far behind academically. It probably would have been easy to keep him for his senior year and let him slide through if football was the main emphasis of the school, but they didn`t... JCS had a star football and baseball player that became a father. He was kicked out of school during the middle of a football season. If these schools were so intent on building sports programs then they would have definitely let these guys stay in school. But that`s not what they are about." even after letting it settle for a couple of days, i find this post disturbing. i think it presents the most uncomplimentary portrayal of private schools i have ever seen. the closing says it all; "thats not what they are about." well, what exactly are they about? someone isnt going to contribute to their high act average, so he gets the boot? someone makes a mistake, he is out of there? no wonder they produce nothing but success, they discard those who fall short. not to mention those who dont meet their standards to start with. what a pretty picture t-gen has painted. schools selecting only the cream of the crop and tossing out any who fall short along the way. just curious, do you forbid any mention of the names of those who dont make the grade? are they expunged from the school's records? can the chosen ones speak to the rejects if they run into them at the mall, or do the unworthy have to be shunned as unclean? some wholesome family atmosphere. come clean t-gen. was that a devilishly clever shot at privates, or did you honestly think it was complimentary?