Letter to the Editor: Our Poorly Funded Public School Programs Are Not Experiments

Courtney is a sixth-grade English Language Arts teacher ay Millennial Tech Middle School.

Jakob McWhinney, Voice of San Diego’s education reporter, recently called the after-school sports program here at Millennial Tech Middle School an “experiment.”

It isn’t.

McWhinney wrote that the program is “sticking around.”

In my view, that’s not exactly right either.

Let me explain. Last week, I sat on the bleachers next to Charles Trott, a teacher at Millennial Tech Middle School. Together, we cheered on several of our students, and we also cheered on one very special young man among them: Makaio Trott. In addition to being a great son, Makaio is an “A” student in my English Language Arts class. He is also one of the star players of our MTM basketball team.

Picture us, please. Mr. Trott, the teacher-dad, and Mr. Courtney, the teacher. Side by side on the bleachers of Hoover High. Picture us celebrating an MTM win and cheering for our students.

Now picture Levi’s mom, Cookie, asking Mr. Trott and I the question we had been thinking about ourselves: “Do you think this program will be around next year?”

That was a hard question to answer, but it shouldn’t be.

In 2020, San Diego Unified board leadership approved funding for our middle school sports because post-pandemic stimulus funds were available to do so. To educators like me, and to parents like Cookie, this was a breath of fresh air. After all, for decades before the pandemic, school funds had been tied like shoelaces solely to the improvement of test scores. Suddenly, in 2020, our district had money to consider what parents, kids and teachers wanted for years.

What did they want? You guessed it: extracurriculars, like sports.

Now, like McWhinney wrote, and countless others have witnessed, I’ve seen the benefits of this programming after school as well as in the classroom. In fact, it isn’t uncommon for me to see students like Makaio scoring on the court and in their grades.

But that wasn’t so before 2020. Prior to that, programs that our school community loved were simply and constantly not funded at all, or they were on the chopping block, even in strong economic times.

In my time teaching for the district, I saw it time and time again. Programs from an era when we valued diversity, which sent all fourth graders to Old Town for a week, gone. Programs that sent all fifth graders to Balboa Park museums for a week, gone. Programs when we valued nature conservancy, that sent every sixth grader to camp on Mt. Palomar for a week. Gone.

This lack of funding leaves school leadership in districts around the country constantly trying to justify robbing Peter to pay Paul so Makaio can play basketball. This has certainly been the case in SDUSD for nearly my entire 28-year career.

New board members, new superintendent, same issue.

We all want programs like middle school sports, but we, collectively, don’t receive the money for what our students deserve.

I think there’s a better way for Mr. McWhinney to phrase the issue.

School leadership making a tough decision does not make a sports program an “experiment” our board cooked up, lack of funding does. Lack of funding makes programs like middle school sports unreliable. Lack of funding makes them vulnerable.

And the “learning curve” is that this lack of funding is, in 2025, only the beginning of what is to come. There is a new assault on school districts like SDUSD right over the horizon. A sort of project that seems to be sticking around.

Like one of Makaio’s three-point shots, it’s coming in hot.

Perhaps a better way to phrase what is happening to programs like SDUSD’s middle school sports is that our entire district is in danger of losing tens of millions of dollars for programs like the one I attended last week. Students, and sons like Makaio, are about to lose opportunities in countless ways due to the withholding of congressionally approved funds by the Trump administration. And for a lot more than just sports.

I say it’s time to call the issue underlying it all what it actually is.

This is a failure to adequately fund what our San Diego’s public schools have always deserved, like our middle school sports program. The lack of funding is now the permanent “experiment” that the federal government wants to pursue.

This experiment, in my view, isn’t whether a school board decides to use money it doesn’t really have to save a program. The real experiment here is whether San Diegans will, collectively, allow programs like it to become so underfunded that they simply cease to exist.

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