...this could be part of the reason why

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880930160

football is the more important than your family apparently.

What the hell is going on the world today that a school board would move to try to dismiss a coach over something like this? Other than the fact it's one of the school's worst seasons in those 30 years? Sad, no disgusting.

In the school district my kids are in sports, in particularly, football get 5000% more attention than anything else. The teams are now corporate advertisements as well as the gymnasiums and the hall of "heroes" in the high school dedicated to the greatness of those who play sports. After all, Kerry Collins the alcaholic wife beating quarterback played football here along with John Gilmore - Tampa Bay and Chad Henne - Miami.

I did ask and was run around when I asked where was the dedications to those students who went on to be things like medical researchers, doctors, computer wizards. They have no answer.

So, so true. Football, the other religion of the South and other places, takes a place on an exalted, golden pedestal (guess the money is good).

I grew up in a smallish town in the South. I can absolutely see this happening there.

This happened in my hometown; that's my former high school. In the past two months we've had 2 people murdered, a cop accused of beating a suspect, and the football coach being pressured to retire b/c he went to his son's wedding. Unfrickingbelievable.

There was a discussion going on an alumni page I'm a member of. Allot of alumni (those of us who have since moved away) were really venting and giving our opinions about this and some of the other crazy shit the school board and county comissioners have done over the past few years. The moderators who are teachers and still living there are not allowing the discussions to continue. Those people down there live in a bubble; I am so thankful I ditched it when I graduated.

Heh, my high school--a public school--was pretty much the opposite of this.

Physically, overall we were scrawny. Sure, we had some athletic people, and quite a few of us participated in sports of one kind or another, but out of 800 or so students in my high school maybe one or two looked like stereotypical football players. We had to combine with the other high school in the school district just to field a football team. Our field hockey and gymnastics teams were quite successful, though.

In my class of about 180, we had something like 60 people taking AP (Advanced Placement) U.S. History, and about 30 people in each of AP Calculus, Physics, English Literature, and Spanish Language; nearly half of my class took at least one AP class. And for the most part, they belonged in those classes. By far our best team was the debate team; I wasn't part of it, but I seem to remember our debate team winning several state competitions.

Our schools weren't perfect--far from it--but they serve as fine counterexamples to claims that public schools can't be good.

When you walk into the high school I went to in New jersey, the first thing you see as you enter is a wall that honors past students for academic achievement.

We had a football, soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf and ski with at least equal or in most cases greater emphasis on the arts and academics as being accomplishments as well.

Our academic teams were, debate, math, science, chess and strategy with arts programs of music, orchestra, marching band, television studio, theater arts, and an on air radio station wrrh 88.7 fm.

But that was when government funded education was the cool thing before Reagan.

Nothing wrong with celebrating athletics in school. I always felt it was up to the parents to celebrate the education of their children.

We've gotten a bit away here locally from pushing a kid to keep pushing themselves physically.

It's just as important to keep a kid physically active as well as mentally challenged.

Why can't kids be smart AND strong? It doesn't have to be either/or....

I look square at the public for this type of nonsense. My school has a strong balance between academics and athletics, until you look outside of the school. Football games are marked with numerous threats from parents towards coaches. At one game a group of parents explained to a coach that because of one bad call, that coach was now fired. I never heard the outcome, but based on the politics and political connections many of our parents have, I wouldn't doubt they pulled it off. A lengthy email to the school board from the head coach about the situation was soundly ignored.

When I was hired I was interviewed by two people - the principal and assistant principal I see around 120+ students a day, and aside from safety concerns I'm responsible for the academic progress of many of those students. Our football coach retired last year and we had to hire a new one - the process required weekly emails to the community informing them of our decisions, and a committee of parents, district officials, and school officials to hire one person who only works with the football team. The parents couldn't care less about the school hiring me. It wasn't the school pushing it, it was a safety response to lawsuit hungry parents. The same parents who vote down overrides for school funding and absolve themselves of responsibility for failing test scores.

My apologies if I've said this here before. Posting on two forums, and I get my signals crossed at times.

Palarran must have grown up in a wealthy east coast school district, such as Fairfax County, Virginia schools, where there is a huge tax base for teacher's salaries and achedemics. Now, most places in the the dirty south, well, at least in the rural areas or inner city Atlanta, don't have all that money. Its easier to sell the football dream and get big business on board to support your school atheletics program than wring some more meager property tax revenue out of people living in public housing projects, trailer parks and shotgun shacks. Getting a good education and going to college is a harder to attain dream and its probably one with less of a payoff. What kind of kid dreams of being a bio-chemist toiling in a lab for 60k a year after going through all that schooling to get a masters or a doctorate? Football is the chance to make tens of millions of dollars playing a game. Even if you don't make the big NFL time, there is always a football scholarship, which is a chance to flex your achedemic muscles, if you so choose, as well as play ball.

Now, if people want to really fix education in an equitable way, than all the money for schools need to come from a national pot and be derived from another source so that people in bad nieghborhoods arn't permanantly pegged with a bad education. Otherwise for small town and inner city America the best way out is either football or the military. It doesn't help either that education and intelligence is considered "uncool". The US does little to promote engineering and science which is too bad since that is what made the US strong. Not football.

Now, if people want to really fix education in an equitable way, than all the money for schools need to come from a national pot and be derived from another source so that people in bad nieghborhoods arn't permanantly pegged with a bad education.I agree, and this has been written about to death by major educational critics. Individual school boards have too much political power, and too many people in this nation are afraid of that shift for several reasons. Rich families don't want to see their funding to schools swallowed up by poor folks. Those in power would just as soon stay in power, and many in this country actually believe that an educated lower class is a bad idea. There are also many people who retire and feel that they do not owe the schools a thing. I believe the courts have put a stop to most of these communities from forming, but there are many retirement areas which do not (read: will not) pay an education tax. The national attitude towards education is flawed.