For decades, people questioned the sense of having two school districts, each with its own superintendent, central office and high school, operating in the same small town of The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia River in north-central Oregon. But election campaigns to consolidate repeatedly failed because each community had strong emotional…

This article discusses how school districts are taming uncivil behavior especially by parents in the stands. Spurred on by incidents of bad sportsmanship, the Albert Lea district, working through a committee of stakeholders, published a set of standards that spell out for players, coaches, students, parents and community members the school…

Without an enforceable policy, school athletics programs are beset by politics, high finance, and public sentiment. The most nettlesome problems include loss of instructional time to sports and extracurricular activities; the appropriateness and effectiveness of no-pass/no-play rules; lack of sportsmanship; proliferation of interstate competition;…

For a decade, Ashland school district required the 70 average for athletes--a higher threshold than the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association standard that many of the state's schools follow. That standard has no minimum GPA, merely requiring that students do not flunk more than one major subject during a marking period. Parents began…