[Aren_Hill]

I agree that if budget cuts are forcing schools to cut extracurricular funding the schools boards should look at the broad picture and ignore the social norm.

More data should be gathered while also having a well defined success metric for various activities.

Is # of graduating seniors headed to college the goal?
Upping test scores?
etc.

In theory they could rank all extracurricular activities by such a metric and cut the worst ones (regardless of the social norm) if they have to cut any at all.