Classification of Private Schools

[knowitall]

A problem with having the championships in Philadelphia is the price of parking and overnight accomodations.  There is no location in Pennsylvania that will make everyone happy.  The cost to travel on the PA Turnpike is a joke.  Really, outside of players' parents and grandparents and a spirit bus full of kids who is going to travel over two hours to watch their hometown high school play for a championship anymore?  There are several diehards, I'm sure, but there aren't that many.

[knowitall]

I think you could get a much larger walk up crowd in a dump like Johnstown than you would get in Philadelphia. Look no further than the AAABA tournament. If Johnstown were to play Philadelphia on opening night at the Point you draw thousands. Play that game somewhere near Philly and 37 people show up.

[Crimson's Ghost]

The simplest solution would be for the students to compete for their home district just like the Vo-Techs and Career and Technology Centers!  We all know that kids aren't attending private schools for the athletics anyway!

Well,most students aren't going there for athletics. I would have been a lousy athlete at McCort or Westmont. I went to McCort because that's where my parents sent me. 

[CMM52]

Most people, in the private and public world, agree that there is a problem and that the PIAA has to do something, but simply saying it’s because of the private schools is being ignorant to a lot of other variables that come into play.

First of all, Pennsylvania is currently in a relatively large population decline which makes comparisons to “the good old days” nearly impossible just due to demographics alone.

Second, most people who say they have a problem with private schools really mean they have a problem with charter schools. The private and public world can get along relatively fine because at the end of the day you have to pay big bucks to attend private school which most people either can’t afford or can’t rationalize paying that kind of money. Charter schools just feed off the home district and tax payer dollars. Charter schools are a poison.

Third, private schools counting all their kids home districts enrollment is crazy. 1. Charter schools are actually funded by the district they are a part of and they don’t do that and neither does the public school closest to them. 2. In the case of catholic schools, most students attending catholic high schools have been attending catholic school their entire lives. They’ve never been a part of a public district and never will be.

Lastly, the problem with the PIAA is that they have major flaws in their ability to govern athletics. You have schools taking advantage of co-ops, some smaller schools still in violation of Title 9, and kids transferring all over the place without any penalty. You think private schools are the problem, checkout how Harrisburg won their state championship this year in football. 3 kids transferred in IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEASON. It’s easy to just place blame on private education, but if you look at the whole picture the problem stretches much further than you may think.

[Crimson's Ghost]

I think you could get a much larger walk up crowd in a dump like Johnstown than you would get in Philadelphia.  Look no further than the AAABA tournament.  If Johnstown were to play Philadelphia on opening night at the Point you draw thousands.  Play that game somewhere near Philly and 37 people show up.

I disagree.  The thing with Philadelphia unlike the rest of the state, it's a basketball town.  It's one of the better basketball towns in the country. That area likes hoops like Texas likes football, and like Minnesota likes hockey. That's why 9,000 people just went to the Catholic League Championship.  People were interested in seeing good basketball. 
 They showed up to see it. If the State Championships were held at The Palestra, one of the most famous basketball arenas in the country, it would do better than the Giant Center.  You may lose fans from this end of the state traveling, but I think you would make up for it with casual fans from nearby. 

It's obviously before my time, but Johnstown had big time basketball in the War Memorial Tournament.  Teams like DeMatha and Saint Anthony's would come here, and from my understanding, people didn't attend it very well and that's why it died. Johnstown has hosted state championships here in recent times, Volleyball and Hockey.  Obviously neither sport is as popular as basketball, but I'm asking.  Did people go other than the families and students of the schools participating?

If you do the rotate thing, I look at last year.  Allderdice was an incredible team from Pittsburgh. They were a special team. I believe they had a nice crowd in Hershey. But again, it was fans or people connected to that program.  If that game was actually in Pittsburgh, against a top program like Roman Catholic. I tend to think more people would have attended that are just casual fans.

[dadw/2sons]

I disagree with some of the things yous said CMM52. If a student transfers to a private school, it doesn't have to pay "big bucks" because of scholarships. The kids who have been in the private system isn't the problem. It is the few that do transfer in around ninth grade or after for "academic reasons" that turn out not to be for education. I don't think the privates and publics would get along because this system hasn't worked since they were united.
I do agree that there are other problems that the PIAA ignores like the public-to-public transfers, but that issue can't be dealt with because of the current policy dealing with the privates.
Another suggestion I have is to institute a NCAA transfer ban on ALL people moving into school, public or private, after Elementary school. If you transfer you have to sit out the entire year of sports. That way if the transfer is really academic then not playing sports would not be a problem.

[CMM52]

1. tuition assistance is granted to some students at the private level usually through generous alumni who give up their own money to help a kid attend the school. It's hard to regulate who receives this assistance since I'm sure no one tells you how to spend the money in your wallet. Private schools who give away "free tuition" don't stick around very long because before you know it you have no money at all. Ask Bishop Carroll what happens when you don't make your kids pay tuition. Don't get caught up in the imaginary world where all these athletes receive special accommodations to attend a private school. Am I saying its never happened, no, but I am saying it's not something that happens so often that we say it's a problem. There are just as many shady things going on in public schools, if not more due to larger population size.

2. As far as transferring rules, again, who are you or PIAA to tell anyone how to spend their own money. If a parent chooses to move their child to a private school then they are choosing the financial burdens that come with it. There are rules in place that say kids can't transfer based on athletic driven ambitions, the PIAA and districts just need to actually enforce them. There are a lot of kids who attend private schools up until the start of 9th grade then go public due to the large spike in private school costs from primary school to secondary school. Should they not be able to all of a sudden just start attending their public district either? Again, you make it seem as if there is this huge conspiracy being driven by private education when really it's such a small part of the larger problem which is the PIAA and districts/leagues failing to actually govern athletics effectively.

[Penn1971]

This goes back to the 1977 or 78 law passed by the Pa. legislature in which private schools were required to be members of the PIAA. If you want to change the public/private rules and improve the classification, that rule should be repealed.

Good luck with that. The state legislature is not exactly filled with geniuses.

[Penn1971]

I agree that if you want to improve attendance, move away from Hershey. There is much better interest in Philly or Pittsburgh.

The downside of that is that traveling is more of a burden, but if you rotate between the two cities, that should even out some.

They would be better doing that with football, too, but that is a different story.

[knowitall]

Another suggestion I have is to institute a NCAA transfer ban on ALL people moving into school, public or private, after Elementary school. If you transfer you have to sit out the entire year of sports. That way if the transfer is really academic then not playing sports would not be a problem.

This idea is ridiculous.  People do move for work or they climb the economic ladder and upgrade their housing or perhaps move into an inherited home.