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The sad thing is that parent, and hundreds like her, are the ones who are keeping this expensive drain on education (extra-curricular team sports) alive. They are the ones who bawl and bully and bray like demented jackasses if the school board even considers cutting a penny from extra-curricular sports, and hold the rest of us taxpayers hostage to their sports addiction. Meanwhile, they couldn't care less if classrooms are overcrowded or teachers are being layed off. But what can you expect -- America is increasingly becoming a nation of child-like adults who put entertainment before everything and don't know the difference between right and wrong.

Yes Laura
That parent was VERY WRONG. I am violently opposed to parents shopping their kids for athletic purposes. I am a coach and I do not cheat and I do not condone those that do.If I had wanted to recruit I would have been a college coach. I gave up that opportunity almost 30 years ago to teach and coach high school because I wanted steady income at that time more than I wanted to be a graduate assistant coach at a small university out of state(and have 2 more years of next to no income).The parents and others doing things wrong get in the news.The vast majority of coaches do things right and try to teach their kids playing for them to also do things right.I attended a countywide coaches meeting yesterday and I think Mo Green's new policies will greatly cut down on the cheating. Can it stop it altogether? Perhaps not, but the consequences for getting caught particularly for parents that lie to the school personel are harsh.I have been coaching since 1979 in this county and have never tried to bring another school's athlete to my team and school.

I'm glad, Laura, that you state what many of us know...there are scores of such devious parents in Guilford County alone. In the high school where my older son attended many years back, we personally knew of five families with students in my son's graduating class year that bent, manipulated or broke rules so their children could attend that school...mostly for athletics. In a sense, I suppose our family was guilty because we knew but didn't rat them out.

We later got "re-districted" for our younger son, but there's no shortage of perpetrators at his new school. I can also point to a family in my current neighborhood that has two children attending high school, and playing sports, out of our attendance zone. The school being attended does not have any special programs that I know of that would be the basis of a special exemption by the school board (in other words, not an IB program or anything of that ilk). And the students drive themselves some 20 miles one way each day, so it's not a transportation issue. Do I know for a fact that there's not a legitimate reason for these children to go to that school? No. But I do know where those students take their meals and place their heads on pillows each night. I'll be respectful of our neighbors' decision to do what they are doing with their children's school attendance. I'll also reserve the right to be suspicious.

Some also cried foul when the NAACP got involved with the Northern investigation for a while (what happened with that?) because it wasn't deemed a racial issue. Yet, I can see how it could be...at least if not racial, then a matter of "economic bias" with racial overtones. Believe it or not, there are people of monetary means (I'm not one) who actually rent houses or apartments or buy lots and put up mail boxes claiming intent to build a home toot-sweet only for the reason that it gives the basis (in their minds) for their children to attend a particular school. Of course this isn't their official "residence," but such trickery is sometimes difficult to spot...or prove.

So while the official findings may be that Northern HS is the lone perpetrator of these infractions, I would submit that at least a partial reason is that other schools in the system have only received a cursory audit of their student athletes. When you think about it, it apparently took a lot of scrutiny to turn up 12 athletes at Northern, right? From what I recall, five athletes were found out real quick...probably because these were students/families that were specifically fingered by those leveling allegations. It would seem that ferreting out the additional seven took quite a bit of combing. Yet coaches, an athletic director and administrators, we've been told, "should have known." Really! If it was so easy to determine this, why did it take considerable personnel resources, money and time to come to this conclusion? I'm still anxious to hear exactly how much Jill Wilson billed for leading this investigation, and if the News and Record or other media sources doesn't request the documentation and publish it, I will. Maybe all of the other high schools in the system got the same treatment from investigators. I honestly don't think so. But as long as the school board continues to grant large numbers of exemptions to families to attend schools out of assigned attendance zones, in my mind it will be complicit of malfeasance. My advice would be this: GC School Board...quit granting exemptions and exceptions...period. Draw the attendance lines, and then let that be that.

It is absolutely WRONG for families to do what those at Northern Guilford HS did. And to defend those behaviors is unfathomable. What a sad commentary on our society and a horrible lesson to teach our children that the only bad thing about this cheating scandal is that "we got caught." But anyone that would take solace in thinking that other schools are "squeaky clean" is simply living a dream. The cheaters constitute a much bigger pool than the conclusion of this investigation would lead us to believe. This stuff has gone on forever. That being said, perhaps the martyrdom of NGHS will be the best deterrent, and if so, good.