Kory Dillon wants to play football at Northwestern Schools, just like he has for the past four years. But now that he’s in seventh grade, the issue of allowing home school students to play public school sports is more complicated.
The Indiana High School Athletic Association added a new bylaw in the 2013-14 school year that permits students from non-public, non-accredited schools to participate in public schools’ extracurricular activities, with several stipulations students and schools must meet. For the 2014-15 school year, the IHSAA added a similar policy for virtual school students.
Individual school corporations reserve the right to decide whether to allow homeschool and virtual school students to play sports, and Northwestern School Corp. board of education spent an hour wrestling with the issue at a meeting Thursday night.
“If we were looking at just one case that would be one thing, but when we’re looking at setting policy for the future that’s different, so I have some concerns,” said board member Bryan Alexander.
The IHSAA specifies that non-public school students must:
- live in the district where they want to play sports;
- provide proof that the IHSAA’s eligibility rules are not being compromised, which includes passing at least 70 percent of a full high school course load;
- have been enrolled in the non-public, non-accredited school for the past three years;
- complete state standardized tests, the results of which would count in the public school’s test data; and
- be enrolled in at least one class at the public school.
“The impetus came from the legislature,” said Sandy Searcy, IHSAA assistant commissioner. “The legislature worked together with the IHSAA to craft language that would be palatable to schools while allowing homeschool and virtual school students to participate.”
Northwestern athletic director Dan Armstrong and high school principal Kristen Bilkey expressed concerns about being able to prove homeschool students are passing classes that correlate with the curriculum offered at the high school, and then holding the school accountable for those students’ standardized test scores when the school staff is not actually educating them.
“[The legislators] were interested in attempting to verify that the students were progressing academically and holding them to the same standard as public school students,” Searcy said.
Without a clear policy on how Northwestern would determine a homeschool student’s eligibility to play, there is potential for team accomplishments to be retracted if a student were later ruled ineligible, Armstrong said, adding that Northwestern applies IHSAA policy to grades seven through 12.
“From an athletic standpoint, there are homeschool students who certainly could benefit Northwestern, but we also have to look at all the complicated issues that surround that before we bring those students in,” Armstrong said. "We have to take our time and get this right."
Indiana does not regulate the type of curriculum non-public, non-accredited schools use, nor does the state department of education require homeschool students to take any standardized tests measuring their progress.
Board members worry because of the lack of state regulation, there could be a wide discrepancy in the proficiency levels of homeschool students seeking eligibility at Northwestern. That would put more pressure on the school corporation to monitor those students’ progress and track what’s taking place in their homeschool education.
Cara Dillon, Korey’s mother, thanked the board for their careful consideration of the issue and said she is willing to comply with whatever policy they develop. A couple of other parents who homeschool their children and other Northwestern parents attended Thursday’s meeting to show their support for the Dillon family.
Superintendent Ryan Snoddy said he has consulted other area school corporations to see how they were handling the new IHSAA bylaws, but in many cases the schools have not had to address the issue yet.
“We’re probably one of the first to look at this with the board,” Snoddy said.
Searcy said the IHSAA will begin tracking the number of homeschool and virtual school students who participate in sports, but at this point there is no count on the number of schools accepting homeschoolers or how many non-public school students have made requests to participate in public school extracurricular activities.
Snoddy plans to present a timeline for making a decision on the policy at a special board meeting on Sept. 25. He would like to survey community members to get their thoughts and get legal advice on whether Northwestern could require homeschool students to pass a test as a condition of their eligibility and if the school corporation could specify which class the homeschool students enroll in.