Getting Cut Can Now Save You $50
May 17th 2007eHigh School
Somebody besides seedy agents and ESPN has decided to make money from high school sports—-the high school’s themselves. Seattle recently became the latest city to approve a pay-to-play program for high school sports. Under the proposed program, students must pay $50 to play one varsity sport or 75$ for two or three. That’s great—-high school athletic programs are now operating under the same discount system as bedroom furniture at Wal-Mart.
You might be wondering why the schools need money so bad. Apparently the reason is that they lost a lot of vending machine revenue when it became forbidden for the machines to sell soda and junk food. So the schools lost money because of a measure designed to keep kids healthy. Then to recoup that money, they do something that influences kids to not be healthy. That makes a lot of sense.
The Seattle school system will at least allow some students to pay a reduced fee, and they may waive the fee altogether in cases where students are unable to pay at all. Still, this seems like a poor way to raise money, and it undoubtedly will result in a lot fewer high school student playing sports. In the end, the only thing this system helps is the chess club, which can now use its free membership as a major selling point.
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