This reminds me of my DD's experience with her high school's yearbook. This was a for - English-credit class that counted toward graduation requirements (which surprised me, since I did not see a lot of academics being taught as part of the "course"). I was appalled when I learned that the only way to get an A in the class was to sell a minimum dollar amount of sponsorship adverts. This was not just a verbal communication from the teacher, it was in writing!

This also, IMO, worked against kids who were shy, who struggled with selling, who had needed after school & weekend jobs, or without their own transportation (to visit businesses), or with working parents that didn't have extra time to enable sales calls, or who didn't want to hit up their friends and relatives.

I raised a stink with the school administration and the school board, and that requirement was dropped.

I agree with you, roarah, your team situation stinks.

This whole scenario is very familiar to me. As a mom of kids that played high school sports (hockey, soccer, lacrosse) in public schools, none of this sounds unusual to me. Especially in smaller towns where there are less people contributing to school taxes. I see it a little differently than you do, Rorah. Yes, we were nickled and dimed for everything (team dinner hosts the night before games-at our homes. Hockey bags, jackets, warm-ups, socks, jerseys, private pre-tryout camps with the coaches, coaches gifts, 50/50 raffles, ads in sports programs, plant sales, and the list goes on and on.) And we had to volunteer for EVERYTHING. Penalty box, running the clock, concession stands, gatorade, team dinners. But, these teams meant everything for my kids and the experiences they gained were worth every penny and hour I donated. My kids gained so much from these experiences and I would happily do it exactly the same way. I would also add that there were kids who were not able to pay for everything and the booster club quietly picked up those costs. No one was the wiser and no one sat the bench for lack of financial contributions. There were so many other ways to contribute. Also, my kids’ teams slways had ”captains’ practices” before the season officially started. no coaches were there and kids that had job or other conflicts could skip these sessions without repercussions. FYI, these teams were regularly ranked in the top 5 or 10 in our class in the state. Even then, most did not go on to receive ncaa scholarships. Some did, but thats not what any parent shoulf count on.

As far as diversity, you know I know your town well.(This isn't news to Rorah, we're summer neighbors almost--I promise I'm not a stalker.) According to a quick google search, your small town is about 90% white. It is unrealistic to expect that the team would offer much diversity. And I agree, that's sad.

Jojo, my town per census is far different than reality for we have many families who are not documented with children in our schools. And there is great economical ( over 20 percent reduced lunches) disparity seen in testing scores and extra curriculum involvement not only by race. There are 30 players, statically even if it is truly 90 percent white there should be three non white players. There is not one :(

I wonder if the varsity boys’ team in your town has more diversity. Statistically it should too.

I am not sure right now. I will likely know soon. I hope it does.

In our district per Public School Review: Minority enrollment is 7% of the student body (majority Asian), which is less than the Pennsylvania public school average of 34% (majority Black and Hispanic).

I guess our boys soccer team is not doing too poorly in terms of diversity considering that we have two Hispanic players, one Asian player, and one black player out of 40 rostered players.

As a former booster club board member you need to attend the booster club meetings and find out where the money is going. There may be legitimate expenses that you are unaware of or not. Our club had to be registered as a non-profit, file annual taxes, have an annual audit, and explain any incoming money that was being saved for ongoing expenses. Such as 1/7th cost of scoring system, seemed to die about every seven years. A paper copy of the budget and expenses were provided for each attendee at every monthly board meeting and reviewed by our district annually.

Our sports, aquatics (water polo and swim) were among the least expensive at our school, but still parents would complain. Yet they rarely could be bothered to attend the meetings, it was usually just the board or committee members and coaches. We sent email reminders out a week ahead of time and the day of the meeting, so it was not for lack of notice. We tried to be very welcoming, we wanted help. Our school was very diverse, the parents on the board were diverse as well. Also, our school was not a “rich school” with lots of donations, we were fairly average income base.

Our school district provided the pool, funding for two coach stipends and sometimes the cost of one varsity tournament/swim meet per season. The booster club budget provided everything else - this included scoreboards, swim meet touch pads, buses, novice and goalie coach stipends, coach gifts, tournaments, lane lines, goals, water polo balls, kick boards, buses, end of season team dinners, varsity letters, coach and team attire, awards, official fees, tax preperarion fees, booster club insurance, cost of janitor if we needed access to locker rooms for practice on weekends, coach training and on and on. Everything other than the swimsuit portion was considered a donation for tax purposes.

We never turned a player away for not donating to the program but it was frustrating when no contibution was made yet the family purchased a new expensive car, then heads off to Hawaii for break and the student arrives to practice with Starbucks and new gel nails, yet other parents are paying for this students costs. Of course, I do not know their life but it does not look great. Then there is the other side where the student approaches us for her parents who do not speak English, they want to break their donation down by week, is that okay? When I tell the student that we will cover her costs if they need help. No, they want to contribute their part, they just do not want to cause problems breaking the donation up.

Anyway, until you have been involved with all the details you can not really know what is happening and where the money is going.

Forgot to mention we also did fund raisers to off set costs and keep the amount we asked be donated lower. Again we asked all the students to participate but I would guess 70% of the students did join in. No repetcussions. We just worked with the coaches to do our best to make them a fun time for all.

Our coaches graded on attendance and student attidude, they were not told who donated and who did not. This information was limited to the Treasurer and Registration parent. The coach only knew the total donations each season.

Jill, your experience mirrors mine exactly. It was due to our parent-run booster clubs that my kids had such incredible high school sports experiences. That, and a few exemplary coaches.

The club and the team are in actuality separate entities but you are not told you can opt out of the parent formed and run club.

Your're right, technically the booster club are separate entitiies, but the relationship is much more intertwined. dBooster clubs are formed out of financial necessity. I wish booster clubs had no reason to exist, but the fact is, no school is able (or willing,) to cover all the costs associated with varsity, (and to a degree, Jr varisity and middle school teams), that parents have come to expect. Parents expect things like new jerseys that players keep, gatorade on the bus, tournaments outside of the regular schedule, assistant coaches, new soccer balls, tennis balls, nets, renting indoor fields during early spring when there is snow on the ground, etc. The booster club raises money to cover or offset some of these costs. The bottom line is that the Booster club serves one purpose only--to enrich and financially support your child's athletic experince. I've never thought of ours as something I would opt out of. It is a thankless job and I am so grateful for what they did for my kids.

Our middle school teams have no boosters but travel, have equiptment and jerseys 2 to 3 paid coaches per team and tons more diversity than the high school teams. it might be correlation not causation but I tend to think the booster clubs might be the difference between the schools team roosters.

I know that the boosters for our boys HS soccer team and all of our volunteers put in lots of time and effort to make the season enjoyable for the boys.

My friend is the volunteer for the away game food. This entails buying and storing cold drinks, and buying as many sandwiches for each game for 40 players and 3 coaches for 10 away games and getting it all to the to buses after the game so the kids can eat on the way home. The boosters pay for the food and drinks but the effort to bring it all together is volunteered.

She told me that after our first scrimmage when our boys were picking up their sandwiches and getting on the bus that some of the players from the other team were coming up and talking to her commenting that they only get a power bar and water for the trip home. Some of these games are far away so the bus might leave at 3:20 to get to the away game and they may not get on the bus to ride home until 9:30 that night. It's a long day and most of the varsity players play the full 80 minutes. They do homework on the bus or when they get home.

To be fair, I don't remember if we had booster clubs for the middle school. Probably not and I shouldn't have included them.

But if you think booster clubs might be discouraging diversity on hs teams, (which would be awful) then maybe you will consider joining the booster club and help them find ways to encourage more inclusiveness.

We also have ”boosters” for the music program and for the theater arts (theater is mainly an extracurricular, music is an area of study as well as having an extracurricular component). They do fundraising to fulfill grant requests that come from teachers and students for equipment and programming and commissions, and scholarship money for camps and college. (Our son paid for his college books one year with his scholarship dollars.) And they volunteer a lot. That was a lot of fun. Work, but fun. I know that not all the ”stars” had parents who were deeply involved, and not all parents who were deeply involved had ”stars”. (I have to say, being on the grants committee one year was great. it’s fun to give money away!) We rarely had to beg for volunteers.

But, I remember the one season my son did x-country, there was a lot of pressure on parents to join the boosters, and to man the snack bars (even when your kid’s sport didn’t use them, like x-country and golf). The ”team moms” felt the pressure from the umbrella booster group and passed it on to the kids’ parents.

That is a great idea JoJo.

Sounds more like Club ball or traveling teams--not school sponsored. School sponsor cannot keep a student from play over money or fundraising issues. We pay plenty here for each student to play. Some teams sell coupon books...but it's not a THING. All that doesn't really matter however. If you want your child to play with these people you know the price of admission. Me I would find another team but I am guessing you will lock step in and follow. There is not breaking these organizations, just sayin.

Arcy I have finally after three years been able to get my BOE to form policy to equalize our three elementary PTAs.It can be done ;)

Arcy, I know all this out-of-pocket money s ounds like club ball or traveling teams, but this is how high school booster clubs work. The board of ed sets a budget for a team and the booster club works hard to fill in the gaps. If a parent doesn't want to contribute then he or she doesn't have to. The coach isn't aware of who contributes. The coach communicates with the booster club president about what is needed and the booster club either makes the contribution. or not to. Plenty of parents choose not to contribute and their decisions have zero effect on playing time.. But thank goodness for those that do contribute.

ETA: Contributions also include non-monetary donations of time.

Part of the reason you see less minority and low income participation is because those parents do not understand the college admissions game. They must wonder why parents go to such extreme lengths for a game, a pasttime.

The craziness all traces back to Harvard worrying about having "too many" Jews.

The whole panoply of strategies for reducing the admission of Jews without creating an explicit quota survived. Admissions directors around the country will tell you why athletic preference, alumni offspring (“legacy”) preference, regional distribution, and well-roundedness (the new “character”) remain vital parts of the admission process. They will tell you that without these things, private donations would dry up. Karabel cites the size of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton’s endowments to debunk that assertion. They will tell you that the student body would be too “intellectual” (long the code word for Jewish), not broad enough. The fact is, universities in the other developed nations do not, on the whole, bother with all of these things. In Canada, in France, in Germany, universities may not administer the simple admissions test of old, but neither have they embraced the admissions components that Americans consider to be vital, and which by chance were originally adopted to exclude a particular religious minority.

Harvard et al suddenly decided that entrance exams were not the right admission criteria, and insisted that they were looking for "character," as demonstrated by playing sports then popular (and in some cases nearly exclusive to) WASP country clubs.

This is why many parents go to such extraordinary lengths to make their children athletes.

Oddly private schools are much better. Everyone must play a sport each season, at least 2 of the 3 have to be team sports. No fundraising or volunteering, just show up and enjoy!

mtr, it all makes me sooo sad. It spoils it for the kids so much. Luckily my daughter sails and ski’s on another hs teams because ours no longer offer these sports and this other public HS does not do this.

Mtn writes, "Part of the reason you see less minority and low income participation is because those parents do not understand the college admissions game. They must wonder why parents go to such extreme lengths for a game, a pasttime."

I would also add that some sports, like sailing, horseback riding, skiing, golf, ice hockey and a few others are prohibitively expensive and often geographically inaccessible to minorities. I coached ice hockey for many years (youth level and then varsity hs as an assistant coach) and during all that time I only remember seeing one player of color (from India) .

Jojo you are so right that is why my daughter volunteers teaching sailing to children through an organization that brings sailing to children probono. And we are working on such a program through a local small ski slope to do the same.

In the US basketball and football offer dis-advantged youths a path to college and a higher income. Outside of the US, soccer (football) offers that opportunity. Although, college is by-passed and the top players go straight to professional status. A lot of the US college soccer players go to Europe to play for a few years in the minor leagues.

Soccer can be played anywhere. You really only need a ball. That's why it's the most played and watched sport in the world.

Rory a few years ago i read a great article on why men’s US soceer fails to compete world wide.The main premise was because here it is an elite rich kid sport where most of our players thus lack heart and grit.

Yes, exactly, Jojoco.

I do wonder about teaching low-income kids sailing and skiing, two very costly sports. A friend of my DD said she enjoyed skiing but didn't see the point of learning something she could not share with her family and did not anticipate being able to afford. Especially since, in the circles she was travelling in, skiing really meant travel, too.

New haven public high schools have sailing teams but guilford does not so it is not always only a wealthy sport anymore. Vermont is not all wealthy and local High school students can often ski for free or very reduced cost as well. These sports should be offered to all children who hopefully if enriched enough with oportunities to play instruments and offered all the same sporting opportunities as children from more fortunate families they too will find similar success when adults aswell.

OMG. Really? Perhaps if all children were given the opportunity to learn these sports, we would have a better society. Opening up new worlds to those who may have limited experience should be something we underwrite with our own funds if necessary. It makes me incredibly sad to hear some of the comments here.

As to roarah's OP, I would run from those parents and take my child with me.

cyn, you’ll be happy to know that there are many organizations whose sole mission is to bring sports like squash, tennis, sailing, skiing and others to kids who traditionslly dont get a chance to participate in them .

Jojoco, I do know that.

For what it is worth, low income parents do indeed understand what is needed to get into college-especially for their children and they do everything they can to give them a leg up. The efforts of those oganizations you mention, Jo, are starting to show results as more children of color and/or from poor families are showing up on golf teams, in ice skating, and I hope soon in all those other sports you all are talking about here.

I will bow out now. This discussion is not for me.

Perhaps if all children were given the opportunity to learn these sports, we would have a better society

I thought so too, but have heard dissenting opinions (as I shared above), that gave me pause. I am trying to paraphrase the conversation we had with my DD and her friend. I suppose it was a case of us thinking everyone might aspire to the same things, and have the same interest. And also the argument, like one can make over a lot of issues, about relative importance. EG I will stop using plastic bags but the real issues is the behavior of large companies. In a similar vein, this young woman's argument was along the lines of, start funding schools more equitably so we have a chance and then we will decide what sports interest us.

Hence in my post I said "I do wonder about..." because I wonder what the right answer is.

Hello, I apologize for not reading every answer, I don't have time right now. I'm in SoCal, and we are a basketball family. While travel basketball would be considered expensive, it is not as expensive as soccer is here, and is only about 1/3 of what volleyball costs (volleyball is crazy expensive). And yes, for high school-season, parents are "expected" to chip in for costs on top of what the school district pays for. For the winter basketball season(in our local high school district), it's about $300-$400 per kid, as an average.

However, what I want to point out is all this "elitist" stuff... is not our experience AT ALL. Many, many kids are "sponsored" (just means they don't have to pay, or pay very little).

For youth, our local basketball programs (includes YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, community rec, and NJB-parent coached local leagues) do NOT require families to pay who can't afford it. No one requires proof. No one ever minds.... it's the norm.

Soccer is the same way! I have friends whose kids play high level soccer, and kids who can't pay are actually "recruited", in order to provide opportunities. We have a large Hispanic population (of course), and soccer is a commonly played sport, and I have never heard of a qualified child turned away. Honestly, I can't even imagine it.

Our local school district is majority white/Asian, however for various reasons (basketball, and others), one of our children attends a high school in a neighboring district that is 78% minority.... and the coaches do not even charge the kids to play, though donations are always welcome, and some families, of course, pay what they can. And that includes off-season, as well. Local clubs could not compete at the travel basketball level without Nike/Adidas to sponsor kids. Basketball is chock full of talented, hardworking, caring coaches, who develop kids' talent. The whole sport seems to me to be run on a shoestring, and I have never, ever seen a kid turned away from any league or team due to inability to pay, and that includes lessons, clinics, etc.

I just wanted to share, and I'm sorry you're having that experience. There are plenty of ways to "recruit" a sponsored kid---asking around at local Boys & Clubs would be where I would start. All kids deserve to play.

I will reference the large public hs that we are zoned for although my children didn’t attend it (they went to a small charter school.) Here, most sports (except football) have club or elite programs that are private and not affilitated with the schools at all. My ds played basketball on a travel team and dd did AllStar cheer and travel lacrosse. And they both participated in these same sports in HS. It is very interesting to read y’all’s experiences in the NE bc even though we are in the ”backward South,“ lol, youth and prep sports IME, is perhaps the ONE area that truly seems diverse and definitely a meritocracy here. We are in a fairly homogenous part of the county…but athletically talented kids are funneled into elite levels of every sport I am aware of here, regardless of financial

background. Even in the private club sports, a percentage of fund raising went to scholarships. Even in dd’s AS cheer, which involves travel and is stupid expensive…there were plenty of kids who didn’t look like her. Heck, she even recruited one of her Black friends to play lax on her travel team bc she was a great runner and dd thought she’d be an amazing middy (and she was.) If a kid is talented enough, and parents can‘t pay…I’ve known folks who anonomously (sp?😂) sponsored kids.

At the HS level, both at our small school and the big HS…its all talent. It’s HARD to make the teams. Coaches don’t give a rat’s fanny who has money and if your kid is purple with polka dots…they just want the best. Booster club funds are spread through all sports. At our sweet school…the headmaster actually spreads booster funds to not only sports but the arts programs, which is cool. Parents are encouraged to join, volunteer, and donate to the BC. What usually happens is the parents with less funds to donate, tend to take on more concession stand shifts. It all seems to balance out. No one is benched for financial stuff.

I love sports here. It’s crazy, can be full of drama…but it really brings kids AND parents of all backgrounds together for a common goal. I met some incredible mamas from a completely different part of the big city through AAU basketball and we didn’t look alike or have similar backgrounds…but yelling, laughing, and cheering with these ladies was an amazing way to meet fine new friends i never would have otherwise. Several of their boys ended up playing for smaller colleges and it was really joyful.

Nini, same.

I started a single elementary Pta goal in my town now I think I might look into a single booster club as well. It seems more inline with title lx regulations too.

Rorah, what do you mean by a ”single booster club”?

One for all teams within a single district.

That sounds laudable @roarah, but around here, while the single PTA thing might fly (and the public elementary school in our town actually ”adopted” a PTA from an economically disadvantaged area, so the a similar thought process,) there is WAY too much rivalery between schools to share a booster club! 😂 So much pride and school spirit!

“One for all teams within a single district”

I doubt that would work here in our big district (62 high schools). It’s hard enough to get parents involved to help their own kids’ teams. Suggesting the money be split with all the other schools would be the end of parental involvement. A parent isn’t going to work a concession stand shift to help a rival high school purchase equipment or new stadium seating.

Where Rorah lives, and like many small CT towns, a single high school serves the entire district.

Even combining PTAs can get very contentious. Before we moved to CT we lived in a town that had 5 smallish elementary schools and 1 HS. Two of the k-4 schools were fundraising powerhouses. We had like 300 kids and our annual galas would net over $150k. A proposal to pool all PTAs got nowhere fast. Again, not sure what the answer is. It is an unlevel playing field and this is for public schools, no less. No doubt though, the involvement and dollars would shrink if it were spread across all the schools. I remember once reading that NYC PTA's had gotten so powerful some of them hired extra teachers...

My town has just one high school so all teams can be covered under one booster club donating the funds to the athletic director to divide between all teams.

Would you expect the AD to pool and then divide all the booster raised funds equally among all the teams? That would open a can of worms as different sports have different needs (ie, in upstate NY lacrosse and track often have to rent indoor field space for spring practices (medium extra expense,) while the baseball team goes to Florida (huge expense) for preseason (again, snow.) Basketball has very few extra costs. Same with Volleyball. Who gets what? Also, I personally wouldn't want school officials involved with the holding and distribution of booster raised funds. It muddies the waters.

There are other solutions that my town's hs did as well. For example, different teams rotated manning the concession stand during football and other high-attendance sports, That way, ALL the teams benefitted fairly equally from the food sales.

If your idea were to succeed, I think the booster club should be run by a board of parents with representative ( s) from each team. But even then, having been on a youth hockey board with representatives from each team, it is very hard to agree on who gets what. And then you have teams that raise more money than others simply due to team size (more kids play boys and girls soccer than are on the golf team.).

I applaud your sense of fairness, but at the end of the day, I think the current system can work, especially if the different booster clubs communicate to help each other out, like the concession stand example I shared above.

Like your one district school, the HSs here all have only one booster club. The money is given to the Principal to spend while conferring with the booster club officials and athletic director.

There has to be some magic formula used because Football has a large roster, while crew and golf have smaller teams.

In NYC, parent fundraising efforts are not allowed to pay directly for teachers. What they can do is pay for extras. For example, Studio in the School is an amazing art program that has a working artist trained to teach come into classrooms weekly, usually for the full school year. The classroom teacher is present and supporting the artist/teacher. The classroom teacher is also provided professional development. Another such program is Bank Street Colleges, The Emotionally Responsive Classroom. Parents can also pay for supplies, trips, freeing up money for more staff.

A district, I believe District 3 in Manhattan is a story of the haves and have nots. Some schools, on the Upper West Side, raise incredible amounts of money. However, further uptown in Harlem, the parents can't necessarily do the same. A group of parents in the more affluent schools started a campaign to pool all the various schools PTAs' money and share it equally. I am not sure what the end results were. It was on the news for several weeks and I believe some monies were shared.

It is my belief that unfortunately, many just can't understand how hard life is for some. That asking even for a $1 donation is beyond some people's abilities. I personally have witnessed children taking extra free lunches when no one was looking so their siblings would have something to eat that night. It isn't just the poverty, it is the mental health strain that just wears people down.

Children desperately need sports programs for many reasons, including nurturing self-regulation and trauma relief. It would be wonderful if we as a society could see that all children had equal access to such programs.

It isn't just the poverty, it is the mental health strain that just wears people down.

Yes, i think that is so true.

In NYC, parent fundraising efforts are not allowed to pay directly for teachers.

I'm referring to this article, which I recalled clearly because it was published right around the time were were in the midst of our own brouhaha about our PTA fundraising.

an excerpt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/education/20schools.html

For years, top Manhattan public schools have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from parents to independently hire assistants to help teachers with reading, writing, tying shoelaces or supervising recess. But after a complaint by the city’s powerful teachers union, the Bloomberg administration has ordered an end to the makeshift practice.

Roarh, btw, what is supposed to come after "sha..."

PS BTW, your DD sounds like a gem. : )

MTn, ”sha” was shattered. My three years of work on DEI hopes have been shattered .

HCBM, I used manhattan, Portland and Greenwhich PTA policies as examples when I started to push my BOA to finally try to equalize the schools. PTA patents at our wealthiest school ( and of coarse the school with the highest test scores) claimed how unfair it is they have to share but when I then said we would push for lottery redistricting they resentfully clammed up.

Many studies actually support that if parents stopped fundraising the local governments then would properly fund the needed sports and enrichment programs. These well intended parent groups can do so much harm especially within economically dispersed districts.

Our local goverment can’t even keep up our roads, adding school sports expenses to the budget will go nowhere. That said, I agree that it would be wonderful if all extracurricular school expenses were covered for students, that booster clubs did not need to exist, but it is just not reality currently.

The example I gave of the 5 elementary schools, they were assigned by lottery.