By Chris Stevens, Editor
One week from today, the fate of hundreds of student-athletes will likely be decided as the Christina School District will attempt to pass a referendum that will provide close to 10 million dollars designed to provide an infusion of funding and resources to the 20-plus school buildings and programs within the district. The previous referendum failed and CSD announced that they would be forced to lay off 67 teachers and paraprofessionals and cut ALL sports, along with music, Chinese immersion and gifted programs.
Seeing as this is a basketball-centric website, I can talk about how catastrophic this would be from a sports standpoint, but it does run deeper than that. Make no mistake – even if Christiana/Glasgow/Newark can’t field sports teams this season, their opponents would just shuffle schedules around, add a non-conference opponent, possibly one from out of state and be done with it.
That unfortunately doesn’t help the students who make up a huge chunk of the district – residents of the East Side and Southbridge neighborhoods in Wilmington, as well as certain segments of West Side. Those kids that play football, basketball, volleyball, run track, etc. would be without an outlet and considering how late this referendum is going down, transferring to another school is not as simple as it would appear to be.
For starters, DIAA’s transfer rules make it virtually impossible for a junior or senior to play somewhere else – the probationary period varies between 90 days and an entire year, although I can’t imagine DIAA wouldn’t make an exception for kids penalized by Christina School District’s hardships. (Note – Former DIAA Executive Director Tommie Neubauer clarifies that students would be a granted a one-time transfer exemption should a school end sports programs – Ed.)
Even if waivers are granted in the event of CSD’s collapse…where can the kids transfer to? The city of Wilmington is one of the largest in the Philadelphia metropolitan area without an official public high school – been that way since Wilmington High School was phased out to create the Charter School of Wilmington in 1999.
Charter school application processes aren’t exactly easy, nor are there that many options available for the serious athletes to go to a competitive and challenging environment athletically and, in some cases, academically.
The Christina School District says the referendum would cost residents between an extra 5 and 29 cents per day. I don’t think that’s a heavy price to pay for kids who count on athletics and extracurricular programs to have something to look forward to. And it’s not the Wilmington residents I’m too worried about – it’s the neighborhoods surrounding Christiana/Glasgow/Newark who might be content to let these schools fail just to keep certain segments of the population out of their neighborhoods.
Even as a teenager, I knew the charter/private/specialty school movement would spell trouble for public schools (full disclosure: I graduated from Howard High School of Technology and as much I am a proud Wildcat, I fully understand it wasn’t the Howard High/Howard Career Center my family has attended going back to the Great Depression).
20-plus years later, public education above the C&D canal is on life support and if this referendum fails to pass, the plug might be pulled. Is it fair to punish the kids because of government’s inability to put an emphasis on free and GOOD public education? That’s a question everyone needs to ask, especially in a time of high tension and strife like the current era we’re living in.
The failure to invest in public education and the future of Wilmington’s most vulnerable residents can only lead to troubled waters for the kids and their parents. And blame will be passed around as it often is in these situations, but there won’t be a lot of excuses if the kids suffer because an extra quarter a day is too much to allow students chances to pursue their dreams and become positive and productive members of society.
Chris Stevens is the founding editor of First State Hoops Report. He can be reached at [email protected]
