A high school sports program neccessary for survival
~ SpeakOut ~
Nancy Bakanowsky ASHBURNHAM RESIDENT

On June 27, Bob Ryan - nationally acclaimed sports writer for the Boston Globe and host of the new sports debate program "The Globe 10.0" - posed the question, "Why do cities and towns always look to cut sports when they face money problems?

In light of our school committee's recent conversations relative to the potential reinstatement of user fees or, worse yet, the complete elimination - ala Stoneham High School - of all athletic and co-curricular offerings, I'd like to borrow Ryan's question and ask why our district continues to use these educationally important activities as "political leverage" in its quest to secure a Proposition 2 1/2 override.

Dan Shaughnessy - Ryan's equally celebrated Globe columnist - addressed this issue late last month, writing, "Sure, there are more important things in any town budget - you've got to have police and fire departments, snow removal, trash pickup, and public schools - but there's simply got to be money for high school teams. A high school without teams is a body without heart, without soul. It's also a recipe for disaster. We need our kids applying their bodies and minds in those hours after the last bell rings. We need them learning the lessons of team-above-self, dedication, and commitment."

Some may question whether the lessons of which Shaughnessy speaks are "educationally" meaningful and/or significant? In many quarters, athletic and co-curricular activities are thought to be "non-academic" in nature. However, this notion needs to be revisited in light of valid empirical data which show that these programs do confer academic benefits, among them, higher attendance rates, higher grade point averages (GPAs), and higher standardized test scores. Knowing that most educational decisions are predicated on sound research, it is incumbent upon the school committee to re-examine and consider the educational benefits/impact of these programs.

At a recent meeting, one committee member spoke to the importance that athletics has played in her son's life, "The first year he did okay," she said. "The second year he thrived. His grades increased when he was a part of cross country, he was very involved, his spirit improved, everything improved."

This committee member's statement is in keeping with the research, which points to a raft of academic benefits born out of participation in athletic and/or other co-curricular activities.

Academic benefits aside, how could the school committee ever justify a decision to eliminate our entire athletic program when - just last year - it asked our two member communities to let them keep the approximate $1.1 million dollars recovered from the Overlook project to address - what they deemed to be and prioritized as - major district capital projects: a renovated track and a new state-of-the-art synthetic multi-purpose field? In good faith, the towns generously allowed the district to retain these funds with the realistic expectation that these revamped facilities would be used, not only by our scholar-athletes, but community groups, alike. If the committee opts to eliminate all athletic and co-curricular programs, what is going to be our school community's return on this major investment?

When Superintendent Michael Zapantis first came to our district in late 2003, he posed the following hypothetical question to members of our two communities: "What would you do with a million dollars?" Resoundingly, respondents said that they would eliminate user fees. Having endured the shame and notoriety of charging the highest user fees in the nation in 2001, the Oakmont community was anxious to remove this embarrassing scarlet letter from its collective chest.

The "user fee albatross," which had hung so heavily around our district's neck, was lifted in the fall of 2005. The impact of this move was immediate. Participation numbers spiked across the athletic and co-curricular boards and Oakmont was on its way to reclaiming its status as one of Central Massachusetts' most successful and respected athletic programs.

Year after year, it has been clearly and consistently communicated that athletics, the award winning marching band, and other co-curricular activities are a top priority for our school community. This is not to say that Ashburnham and Westminster do not place a premium on "traditional classroom academics" … because we do. Rather, it is a statement that our communities value the "complete educational package" - a package in which athletics and co-curriculars are considered a vital and integral part of a comprehensive public education.

I do not envy the members of the committee and the difficult decisions that they will face should the second override request not prevail at the ballot box on August 14. A budgetary shortfall will force the hands of the superintendent and committee, putting them in the unenviable position of having to vet their budget and decide which programmatic offerings and/or personnel need to be cut. In making those decisions, it is the committee's moral obligation to fund those items, which reap the greatest benefits for our students, as well as those that support and reflect the values of our two communities.

The committee must be mindful that it has hundreds of scholar-athletes depending on them not to pull the proverbial plug on athletics and other co-curricular activities. For many students, these programs are the "keys" that can unlock collegiate doors that might otherwise remain closed to them. Oakmont scholar-athletes have been the beneficiaries of athletic scholarships to Harvard, Yale, Clark University, Merrimack College, and Northeastern University, just to name a few.

Last month, the Stoneham school committee - also facing a failed override request - voted to eliminate the entire high school athletic program. The move was met with anger, shock, disbelief, and invariably, it garnered a great deal of unwanted media attention. As of this writing, Stoneham Spartan athletes are still in "limbo" - anxiously awaiting word as to whether the committee will reverse course and resurrect their athletic program. If this does not happen, many of their student-athletes have said they will school choice.

Our Oakmont Spartans deserve a better fate. Scholar-athletes and their families should not have to wait until the eleventh hour - a scheduled school committee meeting on August 15 - to find out if our district will eliminate its athletic and cocurricular programs. If this proves to be the case, I suspect students will look for other opportunities, which will lead to a mass exodus from our district. The lost revenues from school choice out students could become unimaginably staggering, putting pressure on a budget which the district says is already insufficient.

It is fitting that Oakmont scholar-athletes are called Spartans - individuals known as fierce, unrelenting warriors. Our district's scholar-athletes have already endured the slings and arrows of the previous "pay-to-play" system, coming out of the "budgetary battle" both stronger and wiser.

There is a story on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Web site which reads as follows, "An old man wandering around the Olympic Games looking for a seat was jeered at by the crowd until he reached the seats of the Spartans, whereupon every Spartan younger than him, and some that were older, stood up and offered him their seat. The crowd applauded and the old man turned to them with a sigh, saying 'All Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do it.'"

Our school community knows what is right relative to the funding of athletics and co-curricular activities, but the question remains, will the school committee do it?