Board half-approves New Tech sports request

Anderson New Technology High School was approved to develop three of the six individual sports programs they requested during a special district board meeting last Thursday.

New Tech's request to develop their own sports programs was in response to the school board's decision earlier this school year to discontinue the option for New Tech students to participate in sports at their sister high schools - Anderson and West Valley - New Tech teacher Steve Main said.

"In informal conversations with board members, they said they would consider us developing our own sports program," he said.

But the AUHSD board members decision to approve golf, tennis and cross country, but not allow the school to participate in wresting, track or swimming, didn't sit well with the New Tech teacher.

"It's been a very sad process," Main said. "There are a lot of reasons they would only choose three. I'm not sure I'll ever know all of them," he said.

Main said he was disappointed with the district board of trustee's approach to New Tech's request to develop their sports, which he described as "micromanaging."

"The board establishes policy. They don't come in and tell you what sports you can do. They can tell you if you have a sports program or not," Main said.

"They aren't telling West Valley or Anderson what sports they can do. So they are treating them one way and treating us another. I find that to be really odd," he said.

AUHSD superintendent Tim Azevedo said the board does, in fact, have the authority and responsibility to approve or deny school sports.

"The sports that exist at the other schools here - at some point somebody approved them. And that hasn't changed for many years. Whatever sports they've been playing, they've been playing for a long time," Azevedo said.

Azevedo said the board's decision to approve 3 of the 6 sports they requested was a cautious decision, but a decision he felt comfortable with.

"One of the concerns, and it made sense to me, was that they've never had athletics there. There's nobody with a lot of experience with the athletic issues, so this is a totally new world, to even the administration. It's not something you want to jump into blindly," Azevedo said.

"One of my things as superintendent is that if you are going to do something, I'd rather do it smaller but very well," he said.