The Sioux Falls school board is canceling gymnastics for lack of interest:
Participation is what the school board says brought this conversation to the table. The numbers show that there are less than 9 students participating at each school on average.
“After reviewing participation numbers locally and trends nationally. Reviewing equipment needs and projected participation for me I feel like the answer for the budget this year is to not continue to budget these funds,” Carley Reiter said, Vice President of the Sioux Falls School Board [Cordell Wright, “Gymnastics Essentially Cut in Sioux Falls After Tentative Budget Approval,” KSFY, 2023.04.24].
Board president Kate Serenbetz invoked the “fiscal cliff” that Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck warned us about last year:
“We have to look at the big picture, and our big picture is that we are coming up to fiscal cliff over the next few years and we have to be responsible to the taxpayers of this community,” school board president Kate Serenbetz said [Carter Schmidt, “Sioux Falls School Board Tentatively Adopts Budget Including Gymnastics Cut,” KELO-TV, 2023.04.24].
The current Sioux Falls school budget allocates $3.19 million to athletics (roughly the amount Sioux Falls will have to spend to implement Kristi Noem’s Hillsdale social studies standards). That’s 1.5% of the $213-million general fund. Gymnastics this year got $76,094, 2.3% of the athletics budget.
That’s too bad. Gymnastics is a “springboard” discipline that unlocks and endears participants and spectators to a myriad of rewards.
Drats! I’m with P. Aitch. Their goal is to make it suck more by the day for their students. I have a suspicion they just don’t want any funds going to boys in leotards, sadly. And what about Title IX?
perhaps cancelling (or making it a pay to play sport) football would result in more savings, reduce the greenhouse gases produced by driving 7-+ humans all over the state in a bus or two, and put the cost where it belongs, to the participants “sponsors”.
oh, how much more money can we save by cutting the band, choir, chess and foreign language clubs, etc., who receive little to zero funds for their activities? just saying…
perhaps cancelling (or making it a pay to play sport) football would result in more savings, reduce the greenhouse gases produced by driving 70+ humans all over the state in a bus or two, and put the cost where it belongs, to the participants “sponsors”.
Does this have something to do with club gymnastics? I seem to remember that outside of school participation was strong in several sports and that those athletes would not participate in the school version.
The SD school districts that have gymnastics do not offer the activity until high school that I’m aware of. They rely / depend on club sports to do all the prerequisite training and preparation. Parents (who are also taxpayers) pay for this instruction and understand the value of healthy exercise and learning team spirit. Just like many sports, the numbers participating gradually fall as students have other activities that also demand time and maybe a realization that they won’t be a state champion or gain a scholarship.
It would be interesting to see what the fallout rate or participation rate is for tennis, golf or wrestling as these too are team scoring sports but rely on individual performances.
$76,094.?? They pay more for the glorified consultants they hire to screen for a superintendent, building plan, or a school bus etc. They may even have to pay more for after school programs to house more children til parents get off work, versus having those young girls off to gymnastic club.
You know when I beat the number one tennis player from Pierre. Everyone else from Highmore lost. Tennis was abandoned. That hurt. I didn’t even play shortstop for two years. I coulda been a contender.
The Highmore Pirates had Tennis as a sport in the late sixties?? Wow. we had football, basketball, and track…all for boys only. When girls basketball was introduced in 1965, it was a six week practice sport, intramural only…and remained that way for a couple years. This despite the fact that before WWII girls basketball had been quite popular and was played by most schools. Why it had ended for over 20 years is a mystery.
the real question here is the Pirates name. For a state that is about as far from the ocean as you can get, SD seems to have more than its share of pirates and buccaneers, both now and in the past
I only remember the Forestburg Buccaneers. They were located on the James River and generally known as the Buccs.
We also had golf Arlo. We were progressive.
Sioux Falls does have the All American Gymnastics and Wings Gymnastics businesses. Both seem to be thriving as they each built new facilities in the past few years. Maybe the SF school district wanted to loosen up some funds to buy more chess boards and clocks… an extra-curricular with proven scholastic benefits. :)
Kind regards,
David
How many school programs pay for themselves?
Does the School Board generate money to cover their cost?