Fans of Clutch: What are your thoughts on this situation? Weigh-in with your thoughts and opinions. I will be talking about this during my buzzer-beater on Fridays show. Hello Facebook Family, Usually I don’t mix the stories I cover (work) with what I post on here but tonight, I had to vent because it really disappoints me of some of the things that happens and it hurts me even more when MY kids (student-athletes) suffer. This is my personal opinion and based off my experiences as a coach and not a reflection of the New Kent-Charles City Chronicle. (That story will be written as all of my stories are, with straight faces and unbiasedly). Tonight, Charles City’s board of supervisors denied a request from the school board for additional money for repairs. As that was expected, the schools also will have to cut $436,000 out of this year’s budget by March 25. The results of these actions mean the track will not get repaired for the upcoming season and the track season may not happen. What could be worse is that of the aforementioned amount, athletics in the immediate future may be cut as a cost-saving measure. The denial of the funds is because the county is currently in a lawsuit with Waste Management of Virginia. Because of the loss of revenue, it is expected the county to be short of $900,000. Now, I understand the situation with the revenue (not to be resolved until 2016), but it really hurts me because when MY kids suffer, I have a problem with this. Not repairing the track (even though some people may think it’s miniscule) is a sign of things to come. How do you explain to 50 kids that “Thanks for signing up but we’re not going to have a track team?” Try telling 25% of the student population that. And the thing is, the track is used by the community, not just by the students. The school board is planning to officially vote to lock up the track at its work session next Wednesday unless a miracle occurs. Track repairs would have cost $15,000 and could have been taken care of a long time ago. Instead, there will be possibly no track season, no community members walking on the track, no “Relay for Life” event on the actual track, and no physical education classes will be able to use the track due to safety concerns. To top it all off, it will have a ripple effect. Tell a kid “we aren’t going to have athletics” and see how many parents either home school their kid or send them to another jurisdiction. So this is my request to my Facebook friends, all 700 of you all. Please, please, PLEASE if you know anybody who can donate to the school system for the repairs, please share this status. Even if you don’t know of anybody, share this status because it is a sad day for Charles City athletics. Hopefully if you all can help, then maybe we can at least make a statement. I know I write for a local paper, but this is from my heart. The articles I write are unbiased (as with the one I will do for this story), but I just had to express myself due to this situation and it really disappoints me that no matter how successful Charles City Athletics have been within the last 15 years (both on the field, track, and in the classroom), that now the kids will suffer because of a lack of communication and a dispute over funding. Thanks for reading. I love each and every one of you. Dre’
Posted on: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 03:25:13 +0000
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