Sports magnet schools a good idea for Florida — really

Florida public schools have artsmagnets, science magnets, languagearts magnets, foreignlanguage magnets, and on and on. Why not have sports magnets aswell?

The Florida Legislature is considering bills to greatly expand “choice” for studentathletes and, incidentally, students who participate in other extracurricular activities.

Examples are SB 684 andHB7039. Changes to eligibility the Legislature is contemplating include allowing transfer students to play sports immediately; now, they have to sit out a year. Another change would allowparents to place their child in any school that has space, if the parents provide transportation. Anotherwould let home-schooled kids choose to take part in extracurricular activities at any public schools in their district; now, such students are restricted to the school they otherwisewould be assigned to attend.

Some coaches, educators and parents oppose such ideas on the grounds that they will encourage recruiting and create sport-centric powerhouses that are unfair to other schools.

Some legislative proposals seek to combat recruiting by levying fines and other harsh punishments against school officials caught doing it. But nothingwould stop a parent who thinks his son or daughter could get a college scholarship from“recruiting” his or her kid to attend a powerhouse school.

Iwill concede the Legislature could be on theway toward creating “choice” sports dynasties. But some of the horror among educators that a football magnet or baseball magnetwould be an affront to academic purity is elitist and hypocritical.

To makemy case, I drawyour attention to one of the best high schools not just in Florida but in theUnited States: AlexanderW. Dreyfoos School of the Arts inWest Palm Beach. Dreyfoos is a fantastic school. It has its own foundation. Entrance is by audition, and competition is fierce.

The school, always a top-rated school in the county and state, accepts students who showtalent in theater, dance, music, visual arts or communication arts.

Parents angling to get their child into the school can spend quite a bit of money on lessons. The school has denied that creates a bias against poor families. The school also has denied its auditions— which by their nature are subjective— have been bent to admit many children of prominent county residents, including county commissioners, school board members and editors.

Dreyfoos does not have to “recruit.” The best of the best students jockey for entrance, and the teachers pick their students. As a result, Dreyfoos teachers have things much easier than, say, teachers in the Glades, where poverty and isolation have made teaching a special challenge.

Now, every parent of a dance student lucky and skilled enough to be admitted to Dreyfoos is going to claim their child deserves a place in an academically blessed high school and that an excellent dance programenhances the academic atmosphere of that school.

I need somebody to explain to me why it is desirable to have amagnet program thatwelcomes elite high school dancers but itwould be an affront to do the same for elite athletes? What are dancers, after all, but elite athletes?

I understandwhy a coach lucky enough to have a skilled shortstopwould notwant the kid to bolt for a school with a better team. But it is hypocritical for academic types to sneer at that kind of transfer. After all, academically gifted kids already are transferring out to magnets and charter schools in droves. They go to schools that get A’s fromthe state and leave behind schools that get C’s and D’s.

Just as the shortstop’s designated school wishes to keep the benefits of his talent, the teachers and students at the designated school wish they could have used the transferred-out academically gifted kid’s test scores when school grades come around. But the magnet gets the benefit of those.

A kid who can play trumpet in the marching band has a chance to attend an elite magnet school based on special talent. So does the kid who designs the posters announcing the football game. But the kid who plays quarterback? Not so lucky.

As long as kids in sports programs meet academic requirements to stay on the team, what’swrong with letting them choose the programs that cater to their elite set of skills? Allowing athletes to have school choice doesn’t go far enough. Let them have sports magnets.

Contact JacWilder VerSteeg at jwvcolumn@gmail.com. He wrote this column for Context Florida.