But......SOCIALISM!

chandler_vt: Fuggin Bizzy: Derwood: The home school families are still paying school taxes, so why not let them participate?

Seems petty

The 80-year-old widow next door to me also pays school taxes. Let's make her a linebacker!

I don't have kids and a I pay school taxes. I need free beer.

Preach it, brother!

You don't have to be a religious nutjob to home school your children, but it sure helps.

If the little farkers were any good, I'm sure any local private school would be happy to have them on the team.  That's how the free market works.

If they want their kids to have social interactions, let them go to farking school.

Good. Just because this ahole bows down to jebus, doesn't mean he can promote being a mooch.

Yet homeschooling parents in Virginia will be taxed just like anyone else. Seems fair.

I'll go one further.

Let's remove all the competitive sports from our public schools and relegate them to special schools where all they do is sports and other athletic activities. No academics whatsoever-- Just sports.

We take the kids who are going to public school just to aim for a sports scholarship, and we stick them in the sports school, where they can play football, wrestle, cheer, or play other sports without all that messy learning to get in their way. They can put 100% of their efforts toward getting that scholarship to a sports college where they can be scouted and eventually make some sort of career out of their sports focus.

This has the added effect of getting all the stupid jocks out of the regular schools so that they aren't distracting students who actually want to learn something. It stops public schools from being tempted to pass total idiots through the system just because they're on the sports teams. It cuts down on bullying, I'm sure, because the jocks tend to also be the bullies. It cuts down on date-rape in the public schools, since-- again-- the jocks tend to be the ones who do this sort of thing (oh, come on. You know it's true.)

We get the disruptive jocks out of the academic system and get to focus on education, while the jocks get the benefit of not being bothered by having to learn anything that doesn't pertain to their sports of choice. Why should a guy whose sole career goal is playing football be concerned with algebra or creative writing? Even if he ends up as a sports announcer or sports radio DJ, he'll have the necessary skills for his audience without that academic stuff getting in the way of his game.

Public schools could actually spend some money on other extracurricular activities, instead of funneling every extra dollar into the sports programs. The other kids would get decent programs for a change.

I remember when I was in high school, the school board actually voted two years in a row for the music boosters to divert a large portion of their funds to the football program, because the football team needed new jerseys and a new scoreboard. How nice it would have been for the music programs to get the equipment they needed!

I used to live in a town where they put most of their focus on the jazz music program, and very little focus on their sports teams. It was strange to see, but their jazz band was a huge draw for the school. The concerts they held were attended by people who didn't even have kids in the school. The money they made on ticket sales was significant. Students were scouted by universities and the military for their music programs. It was a whole different world, and the coolest thing was that the students who participated in the music program were also doing well in all their other classes. Nobody passed a kid just so he could be in the band. The students, being in an environment where sports was not at the top of the food chain, were driven to succeed in their classes because they wanted to, and because they weren't watching drooling idiots on the sports teams getting passed through classes without doing anything.

I have nothing against kids playing sports. I just see no reason why sports should be taught in a place where we send kids to get an education. It should be something that is separate from school. If people want their kid to be an athlete, then they should have to send them to a school that is for sports and sports alone. No public school should be taking a penny out of their budget for sports.

Yes, have a P.E. class. Teach them general fitness, exercise, and personal hygiene. Teach them about their body's health and how to maintain it. Leave sports as an activity that occurs outside the school, without school funds, and without it impacting students who do not participate in sports.

This whole idea that sports  belong in public schools is an old-fashioned, outdated, foolish notion that does nothing but make generation after generation produce hordes of uneducated idiots. It's time to separate sports from education. They have no reason to be paired together.

I work with kids. The home-school kids are certainly more educated, in the sense of book-learning. However, they are SO very incapable of socialization, they might as well be engineers. It's actually kinda spooky. I don't however, want to build a "sports" school, since all of the guys are going to wind up being sociopaths of a different order...like the NFL, NBA, etc.

An anecdote: An acquaintance of mine once ran the carnival business in the lower SE. He also ran the midget wrestling league. He kept them in their trailer. "Ya caint let em out", he said, "cuz they just go to a bar, git drunk, and gang up on somebody. What you do is open the trailer door, throw in some Veeny Weenies, and let em eat. Otherwise you got a mess on your hands, and no show!"

True.