A Different League
December 30, 2016
Less than two years after The Palace of Auburn Hills completed $40 million of improvements to an already magnificent facility, there is serious talk of bulldozing The Palace to the ground after the NBA's Pistons bolt for downtown Detroit,
I once bought an IBM 360 mainframe computer for the Michigan High School Athletic Association office that was out of date within 12 months; and I felt terrible about it. But it was a modest amount and we did it with our own money. What is happening in Auburn Hills is, quite literally, in an entirely different league.
These developments may affect the MHSAA which has conducted one of its largest and most prestigious events – the Individual Wrestling Finals – at The Palace since 2002, and has a contract for this event through 2019. The tournament involves about 1,000 student-athletes each March.
I confess that it is difficult for an organization grounded in never-changing values to react well to the ever- and fast-changing landscape created by professional sports and major college football and basketball in their insatiable pursuits of revenue. We must, of course, and very carefully; but it's maddening.
Early Learners
January 26, 2016
The good news is that the minimum number of pupil instruction days required for public school students in Michigan increases from 175 to 180 for 2016-17. The bad news is, Michigan public school students are still sitting in the back of the school bus.
The U.S. is in the lower half of the world’s nations in the length of school year for secondary school students, and Michigan is in the lower half of U.S. states in the length of school year. So just about anything the Michigan Legislature would consider to facilitate earlier starts to the school year as well as longer school days and weeks of instruction would be good for today’s students and our state’s future.
Among bills now pending in the Michigan Legislature is Senate Bill 567 that would remove the prohibition on public schools from beginning instructional days before Labor Day, except that classes could not be held on the Friday before Labor Day.
Some will be critical because this could put classes in conflict with double session sports practice days and large, all-day cross country, golf, soccer and tennis tournaments that are now common in Michigan school sports in late August; but these so-called conflicts would have positive effects:
These “conflicts” would tend to reduce the number of days of two-a-day practices that are much less in favor today with increasing attention to the health and safety of student-athletes.
These “conflicts” would tend to reduce the frequency of students playing in contests before they have attended any classes, which is far from ideal philosophically and a frequent cause of practical problems – including participation by ineligible students and resulting forfeits.
Students are engaged in school sports, marching band, cheerleading and other school-related activities throughout most of August, and they are much more eager learners then than later in the school year. Schools should be allowed to let them learn in the classroom then, not just in extracurricular activities.