Reply to Arlington proposing to close county gymnastics program

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Arlington proposing to close county gymnastics program"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When you sign your kids up for a county sport or class or summer camp, do you email the county to ask them what portion of their costs are being recovered by the fees you are paying? I'm guessing you don't. That information hasn't been shared with gymnastics parents either. The county sets the fees. We pay the fees they charge. Gymnastics parents haven't been taking advantage of anyone. All of this has been determined by the county and they're the only ones with the information about fee recovery.

After this was proposed, not even a whole week ago, gymnastics parents asked the county to share this information and it still hasn't been shared by the county manager.  We also know that swim doesn't recover its fees, but that information hasn't been provided in any detail either. The only thing we know is that the county is making a payment of 800k towards Long Bridge next year.  It's awfully smug of you to accuse anyone of taking advantage of anything without having more information.[/quote]

You couldn't figure out having nearly an entire facility built out and dedicated to your competitive sport alone and coaches employed by the county was kind of a sweetheart setup?

I'll be honest and say my kid did AAC for a couple years and when I realized the setup and saw the price (it's a lot cheaper than private clubs) I was immediately thinking....wow this is weird.  I thought it was strange the swim coaches had arlington county email addresses.  And I thought it was kind of a racket and said it to people.  So yeah, don't mind if the swim team is being called out and not shocked at all to hear it.[/quote] Honestly, historically the gymnastics program has made money. That's one of the reasons it was expanded in 2017.  It sounds like an only recent years it hasn't been recovering its fees, and there's plenty of demand for the program to cover its own costs. So yeah I never really gave it a thought.  I spent far more time and thought dealing with waitlists just trying to get my kid in anywhere because gymnastics is so oversubscribed.

The prices for private competitive gymnastics programs aren't particularly public. Most require that you reach out and have a conversation with someone and I've never done that. Many of the other programs also aren't apples to apples with Barcroft because they offer more extravagant travel or have fancier uniforms or have more/better coaches or have longer practice hours, etc. It's not that easy to just compare.[/quote]

I can see how the operating yearly budget portion of the gymnastics program could make money.   But the decision from the County to build out a facility to this extent for such a specialized sport and spend millions on it is a baffling decision to me and I would be curious to hear if there was even any debate about that at the time.  Do these types of facilities exist at a local government level in other places?  Maybe this is normal.   As many people have pointed out, a pool is a different investment for the community.[/quote]

Stafford also has a county run Gymnastics program and competitive team. I havent had time to check out others.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics