BCSWguru said:
Are they not participating in athletics currently? Would $50 million make more kids participate?
Not sure that more can participate, but I understand the point of the upgrades as allowing students to *continue* participating with reasonable facilities. Facilities get old, worn out, and stop working properly.
I'm not familiar with the football facilities, more so with the CSISD pool. In recent years the pool heater kept conking out, the showers were cold, etc. So there were real functional problems, not just aesthetic issues. The district is spending $2 million from the last bond to renovate the facility. Might sound like a lot, but that amount won't get us close to the level of many surrounding districts in terms of facilities--only back to a properly functioning pool that hopefully can last for a number more years. The district considered building a new natatorium at various points for what would have been several times the renovation cost, see
https://swimswam.com/texas-style-high-school-pools/ for examples. They instead took a more fiscally conservative approach to keep the current facility functioning.
I see the proposed athletics renovations in much the same light. AMCHS is an older building which has seen increasingly heavy use over the past several years, and it stands to reason that it's going to need significant investment to keep it running at a level that doesn't distract from educational goals. For me this includes both core academics and extracurriculars such as athletics, which I view as having an important educational function. Many here have made a good case that the facilities, athletic and otherwise, are pretty much decrepit. Maintaining and upgrading them now is the right move to get them back to a properly functioning state and hopefully keep them that way for many more years.