Two Football Stadiums?
Wasteful Educational Spending
By Daniel Muniz

When I opened up my mailbox, I found a political brochure promoting passage of a school bond for the school district I live in. Of course I was reluctant to read such literature because I already pay very high taxes to my school district so I knew that there would be some kind of twisted convoluted logic explaining why more money is needed. However, I like to say that I have an open mind to all the viewpoints and I feel that I at least need to be informed of everyone’s talking points even for the things I oppose so that I at least know what their opinion is.

As I opened the brochure, one bullet immediately caught my eye. It stated:

NEISD is the only district of its size in Texas without a second stadium.

I almost fell over in laughter.

Another large school district in my city already has a second football stadium. It was expensive to build and it was a huge waste of money for the taxpayers of that school district. I will gladly pay taxes for the bread and butter issues of education but I am not about to hand over my wallet for a useless luxury.
 

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Unfortunately, the educational bureaucrats have been disingenuous and duplicitous in explaining their reasoning. The bottom line is that a second football stadium is not a need but a want.

Here is how the North East Superintendent Richard Middleton explained his rationale for the additional athletic facility:
 

"Parents didn't want kids playing games on Thursday nights and in the heat of the day on Saturday afternoons." Source: The San Antonio Express-News

First of all, is football a requirement for graduation? Is football a necessary component of an educational curriculum?

If the answer is no, then football is a luxury instead of a necessity. That stadium is not going to teach Johnny how to read and write or how to add and subtract. He might learn a little bit about physics of a football flying through the air but it won’t be enough to help him pass any kind of math test.

As for parents who don’t want their children playing on the field on a Thursday night, if that is such a big concern then do not allow your child to participate in that athletic program. If it is an inconvenience, then I say tough luck and go find another hobby for your kid to enjoy. And if playing football on a Friday night is so sacred, then go practice your religion somewhere else instead of asking me to reaching into my wallet and pay for it.

Now what about the heat of a Saturday afternoon?

Again, if a parent is so worried about heat exhaustion, then that is a legitimate healthy concern and I have no objection to that. But here is an easy answer. Do not allow your child to participate in that athletic program. It is that easy. In fact, there are plenty of high schools that do play football on hot Saturday afternoons. And something amazing happens. The parents of the football players allow them to still play football under the hot sun.

And if it is inconvenient that your son is playing football on a Saturday, then I say tough luck. That is not a big enough reason for taxpayers to be shelling out millions of dollars to build a second expensive football stadium.

But what bothers me the most about this kind of wasteful spending is when bureaucrats bring out the violins to play some sad songs about how terrible it is to inconvenience students. Give me a break! Why do taxpayers have to fork out extra cash to finance a convenience for a narrow group of kids when there already is a viable solution?

My school district is growing by leaps and bounds with more high schools to be built in the future. So instead of building an additional stadium for the extra teams, why not play on Thursday and Friday nights and for the entire day on Saturday. On Saturday, the first game can begin at eight in the morning, another one at noon, the next one at four in the afternoon and the final one at eight in the evening.

All of a sudden, there are now six time slots to play football.

The Saturday morning, noontime, and afternoon games can be for games of high schools in the district and the evening games can be for the teams that are from out of town. This simple logistics eliminates any need for building a second costly stadium.

But no, all big school districts already have two football stadiums so my district needs one too. So by sticking stadium into a big bond proposal, its passage was a snap because it was one piece among many necessities.

It is time for taxpayers to rise up against wasteful spending at the local level. Waste is everywhere but it can only happen when people sit idle and allow it to happen.

 

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