Every day millions of children come home on a bus instead of staying after school, and for many, there is a very good reason. It seems to make sense, having everyone take a extra curricular activity, but in reality it doesn't work. Every student has a reason to go, or not to go to an extra curricular activity and some reasons are not just because of preference. Not everyone has a lifestyle that allows them to stay after school or do a sport, many of the students won't have a way to get home. The school will not be able to provide enough buses for these students either. There isn't even enough room in the current activity rooms to hold 78 kids, and the materials needed are to expensive. Having mandatory extra curricular activities will be a disaster because there is not enough room, it is to expensive, and students won't be able to get home.

If our school system made extra curricular activities mandatory the first problem would be the amount of space needed to support the students activity. For example, there are almost 900 students in my school, This would mean in the 10 after school activities my school provides, there would need to be 90 kids in each one; That's enough to fill 4 classrooms. This brings up another problem, the school can't have 150 kids in one program and 10 in the other, so the school would have to chose the activity for us. Just that fact alone takes all the excitement out of the activity, just for reference, imagine the star quarter back on the football ending up in art instead, possibly destroying his or her whole football career. Most of my school's after school activities need certain spaces for the participants to practice and do their activity. For instance the robotics team only has one room with all of the vices, saws, and tools while the other robotics rooms will have students constantly running between the other rooms getting tools that they dont have in their completely different room. The cheer leading team will have to move to the gym to fit all the people, but so did the pep band, and basketball practice is already in the gym, but they could just go in the auxiliary gym which is smaller than the cafeteria, the problem with that is the wrestling team is already in the auxiliary gym. The school has no room to fit every team and all of the clubs.

If Prince William County decided to make after school activities mandatory the schools would not be able to afford the materials needed for the programs. A dungeons and Dragons game along with all of the books and die is over 200 dollars, now imagining multiplying that by 7 just to afford the basics for the club. The robotics team pays around 600 dollars for each robot, and more for the competitions, now that program has to buy 15 robots and buy more slots at the competitions. If some how the schools were able to afford these expensive along with all other clubs, teachers, and staff salaries it would come from our local taxes. This would double our local taxes, but if the schools decide not to over tax the citizens of Generic_School than there would be no way the school could provide the gear and equipment for the school's clubs and teams. My school's sports gear is already worn out and our schools are in dire need of new equipment, but there is no way we could spend 7 times as much just to give everyone more cheap and basic equipment.

while most kids in the school do not participate in a extra curricular activities because they don't want to, many students don't participate because they can't. On most days my dad gets home at around six so when my activity ends at 4:30 in the afternoon i have to take the bus. Currently my school has 2 activity buses, one for Generic_City and one for Generic_City. The activity bus arrives at my home which is 5 miles away at 5:40 in the evening, it takes the bus 1 hour and 10 minutes to drop me off at my home. With a direct route the bus would have to travel at 4 mph. There is no way the school can hire enough buses to work almost 12 straight hours a day. If the school really can't find enough buses each bus would have to make 70 stops. Many students won't be able to be picked up by their parents and will be forced to endure the 3 hour bus ride through a city with only 30 square miles of residential area.

If our schools really made after school activities mandatory, it would be a disaster. One of the biggest issues with this topic is that in its simple form it looks like a great idea, but when you look at the details and what it would cause it shows the big mistake it would be. Giving every student the chance to do an interactive activity they enjoy would be incredible. Sadly, doing that in our current school system would cause all after school activities to stop going to competitions due to the over crowding; The students would not be able to pick their own activity and would be forced to do something they are bad at or just dislike. Making the activities would not only be a punishment to the students of Generic_School but to the teachers, the bus drivers, the custodians, the administrators, the taxpayers, and even our entire county's well being. In this scenario it may at first look like everybody wins, but really when you look at the real facts everybody loses. The entire mentality of school will become even more negative as students are stripped of their choice to do something they enjoy and taken away from time with their family. Although the goal of this rule would be to create a good learning environment and a chance to participate in more interactive learning experiences,our county administrators might fail to see the real outcome of this decision. In conclusion, enforcing after school activities will take away the last form of student's choice in our schools.