I really want to support this effort. It's just that the idea of pressuring a sports league to offer more championship opportunities misses the much more important goal of getting kids back to in-person school.

Our K-6 classrooms are more than 70% full while our High School classrooms are perhaps 20% populated on any given day (kids come and go as they please). Many Gunn and Paly teachers continue to teach exclusively to a sea of Zoom faces and some are not even teaching from their PAUSD site!

But, the "classroom seats" of our sports teams (including contact sports) are full? AND, we need more "class time" for championships? Talk about upside down priorities!

Here's an effort I would support. All students who are attending school IN PERSON, and who are involved in any after school sport or activity, are allowed to participate in any sort of practice, performance, or competition, up to, and including, championships.

If it's safe enough for a student to practice and play their sport, some without masks and against teams from other schools, then it's safe enough for these kids and their teachers to be back in the classroom.

It's disgraceful to pressure SCVAL to get back to championships when PAUSD is not putting the same energy towards getting kids back to classrooms.

Football first. Even in our admin hirings.

What a joke. NOTHING stopped Principals Kline and Stratton from voting in favor of playoffs the first time around. NOTHING stopped Don Austin from talking to Brad Methany in previous weeks. NOTHING stopped the Athletic Directors from Paly and Gunn from asking their principals to vote in favor of playoffs.

But now Don Austin wants to back everything up because there's a possible lawsuit. What else has changed? Nothing has changed in the spring sports that makes it a more viable option now versus when the vote was originally cast. There is no reason why the spring sports should not be allowed to participate in CCS. The principals of PAUSD chose to vote to exclude them from the playoffs, most likely with Don Austin's knowledge.

As Danny Dye's letter pointed out last week the administrators failed the athletes.

Don Austin is asking for the league to vote "as a group". They already did. All of the schools, including those under Don Austin, voted against playoffs.

This is just another example of the district and the administrators saying that they care about students, but when it comes time to back up their talk, they drop the ball and then try to blame it on someone else and hide so no one notices.

What the athletes and their families deserve is to hear from Brent Kline, Wendy Stratton and Don Austin as to why they voted against the playoffs in the first place. What were the deciding factors? Which of those factors changed?

These administrators are setting a horrible example to their students on how to be accountable and own up to your mistakes.