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Junior hockey team makes teachers pick up cash off ice for school supplies in intermission

olivier neven
Writer
·2 min read

As the game of hockey looks for new ways to bring in and entertain fans, more and more arenas are holding various contests during intermissions, often giving away prizes or raising money for charity.

But some ways of entertaining are more tone deaf than others.

During the first intermission of a game between the Sioux Falls Stampede and the Tri-City Storm of the USHL on Saturday night, 10 school teachers were tasked with grabbing as much money out of a pile of $5,000 in one-dollar bills laid out on a mat at centre ice.

The money each teacher accumulated was to be used for school supplies for their classroom. South Dakota, the state in which Sioux Falls is located, ranks 49th overall in teachers’ salaries in the United States. Many students in the Sioux Falls School District are also on reduced-cost lunch programs.

The intermission competition drew major criticism online, highlighting the “dystopian” nature of such a contest.

The state of South Dakota set out to put more money into the K-12 public system in 2016, raising average teachers’ salaries by 17 percent between 2016 and 2020. Despite the increase, South Dakota still lags way behind compared to the rest of the country.

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