Kudos to NER for carrying the schools and making them relatively affordable. It's too bad that it appears it's done at a loss. Also, I'm really glad that the issues are being looked into, and that really realistic alternatives are being proposed, accomplished, and more are coming.
The lion's share of the "problem" isn't necessarily what the SCCA is or isn't doing or is or isn't able to do, it's what other organizations are doing that looks pretty darn attractive, especially given today's economic environment. The other orgs I'm citing here are NASA, track day businesses, Lemons, Chump, etc. I'm not here to argue the relative merits of each vis SCCA, but they are definite alternatives.
Onto ideas. What about nixing schools during race weekends altogether? Instead, have the school integrated into weekday PDX events, weekday in particular because track rental is cheaper. Or do those on a three day schedule in which the PDX/school combo leads into a race weekend. The good part about that is that you'd have "real racers" being mingled in with PDX/school participants and maybe cross pollinate the bunch. Heck, licensing school guys could probably work in with PDX novices for first session, then progress from there to get their own passing sessions later in the day. Call this an alternative school, but instead of running a couple of guys through it, make it widely known that it's a licensing path.
As things are now, I think the alternative licensing tracts are going to become the method the majority are going to use to get licensed (looks like me included), and to a great degree that's great and progressive thinking. However, the avenues being used through the alternative tracts are not really (usually) SCCA events, and that's frankly too bad. AFAIK we are bootstrapping track test days and sometimes other org's HPDE sessions for this purpose.
Guys, bottom line, the days of a guy having the sun rise AND set over their racing "career," and it being entirely under the SCCA banner, are LONG GONE. To stay relevant, the SCCA needs to branch out a little.
And yes, we have strayed off the topic a lot.
Will