Does the public education system exist to educate or to play sports? That is the question.
Paying football coaches million-dollar salaries while every student in the nation struggles to pay for an education is a crime. If athletics generates that revenue, why isn’t more of it poured back into the school? Who and for what purpose do these coaches exist? Themselves? Is the education part important? Guess not.
In the June 29 editorial “Outrage Rings Hollow, Coaches’ salaries bemoaned as society puts them on a pedestal,” The Columbian states that “our society has allowed high-profile coaches to be removed from the university’s educational mission.” No kidding. Our society doesn’t even know what coaches get paid. We hear the continual mantra “union teachers get paid too much” in the media but little or nothing about $2.5 million coaches, or six- or seven-figure salaried administrators. Multi-millions spent to play a game while schools, families, students, struggle for education. Another piece of our society that has its values backwards.
Bill Kelley
Yacolt
