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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The amount of misinformation and bad faith argument on this thread is pretty shocking... but I guess we're seeing what happens when teenage keyboard warriors become adults?

Regarding sports at SJC: if you weren't aware, SJC football already travels and hosts nationally, and has done so for years. Texas, Georgia, Florida, California... they even hosted a team from Hawaii last year. Nothing substantive is changing on that front, and they are far from the only team at St. John's to do this. Track just went to Tennessee; girl's Basketball went to New Jersey; swimming went to New York. And if you think SJC is the only school in the area doing things like this, you haven't been paying attention to the high school sports landscape for the past decade.[/quote]

SJC teams travel too much, particularly in sports for which top-tier competition can be found locally.  It makes clear the priority they put on sports over academics.  [/quote]

Track just went to Tennessee over spring break, not missing any school, yet the music department missed several days for a competition in Disney. Are the performing arts "traveling too much"? Did St. John's "prioritize music over academics"? "Too much" is a completely subjective criticism: what's too much for one parent is not enough for another. The reality is that the majority of SJC teams do [i]NOT[/i] travel out of the DMV area, and the ones that do typically only do so once per season. St. John's focus is on educating the whole individual, so while I can't agree that the school prioritizes sports [i]OVER[/i] academics, I would concede that many stakeholders in the community give them equal footing. That may be an unacceptable equation for families who believe everything else should take a backseat to academics... but considering the number of parents these days who have no problem pulling their kids out of school for club competitions (let alone the number of organizations who feel completely comfortable scheduling their competitions during school days to begin with), it seems like SJC is just meeting families where they are and providing opportunities for their students to excel in a variety of fields, skills, and interests.[/quote]

66-75% of the students on the music trip were traveling and performing as an academic requirement for their music elective, not as an extracurricular activity. 
[/quote]

I love how you didn't just say "many of the students", but actually pulled out percentages as if you went and did a survey of all the trip participants. With evidence like that, I think you've got a job opportunity with the current administration- only the best numbers!

A music kid who goes on a multi-day trip is not some freshman who just picked up a trumpet for the first time- they're kids who have chosen (see also: "elected", as in "elective") to pursue musical performance as a passion, and many of them are on scholarship to do so. Thus, your point just reinforces my own: that St. John's cares about the development of the whole person and will therefore allow students to miss class for activities deemed beneficial to their personal, creative, moral, or athletic development... sometimes at the expense of the academic. It's obviously up to personal and parental discretion about whether that is the right choice for a college prep school, but it seems to be working for them.[/quote]

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