Do your public schools play against private in sports?

Yes, we play some private schools, including one large Catholic school who blatantly recruits for sports- nice morals, eh? We regularly beat them, so guess the recruiting isn't going as well as they might like.

I dated a guy from De La Salle a million years ago - it was weird when the movie came out - sorry for the bizarrely self absorbed segue...

Yes and no. In cross country we do at the big regional meets but they don't count in our ECC conference standings because they aren't in our region. These races are CT, MA, RI, etc we even have a team come every other year from Ireland to race. One of the top schools we race against in Division 1 is private but I've never heard of them stacking the deck. I'm sure some of their parents can afford to send their kids to off season camps, which can definitely help. My kids have been given the opportunity to go to a particular camp, but I can't afford to send both of them,

We don't have any private schools in our division for ECC conferences, so we just compete against other Division 1 public schools in our region.

This is the same for us.

Yes, our schools do.  But the parochial schools are not at an advantage here.  The private Catholic schools (for which one is my alma mater!) had such a low enrollment rate that three of the schools had to band together to form a football team.  They call it the Holy Trinity 

There are six. All quite competitive in athletics. 

Yes- we play against a team that recently had a movie made about their football program. They had a 151 game winning streak. On the promo for the movie they would always show a scene with the coach saying "it's not about winning." Yeah, right. Unfortunately it's like that for all their sports. Definitely not a level playing field.

It is in our league. Out of 6 schools, 4 are from small, rural communities, and 2 are private schools from the city. Of those 2 private schools, and 1 of those schools definitely recruits/scholarships athletes. I agree it is very frustrating.

Yes, that is the attitude. We have really good public schools but they do have common, regular ole folk in them. We have two decent-sized private high schools. We have several tiny ones. One of the bigger schools is extremely expensive. Last I heard, about ten years ago, it was over 20K/year. Many (most?) of those kids transition to public high school. I meet quite a few parents at curriculum nights and while they're on school tours and I'm always asked about "the type" of students their kids would be around if they choose to come to our school. One woman actually asked me if I would notify her if her daughter started acting interested in a boy that may not come from the same type of family as she did. There wasn't a particular boy she was interested in, she just wanted make sure that her kid only dated someone of means. @@ The other big school is a Christian school housed at a mega church. They aren't allowed to learn about evolution or even have coed PE. 

But I can understand their feelings even if I don't agree with their attitudes. I purposefully chose for my children to go to diverse schools. But I admit that when I hear about violent incidents or my child's learning is compromised because of the number of disruptive or lower-level learners in her class, I second-guess myself. I sometimes wonder if the life lessons she is learning are more important than the instruction she is missing or the danger she faces. Three kids, from three different incidents, left her school in handcuffs today. 

Our public schools do play against local Catholic schools. The Catholic schools are usually better at least in one sport, so they'll almost always win State in certain sports. It is what it is.