Home Schooling and Sports
My kids are both long gone from high school, so normally I don’t get have that much personal interest in the mundane school stuff that goes on. But this caught my eye.
First off, the parent only wants to have their child participate in intramural sports. Not varsity, no travel involved, just healthy competition amongst kids within the school/community. Here’s what the BOCES Superintendent had to say:
Invited to speak at Monday’s meeting, Donald A. Ogilvie told the School Board that homeschooled students have a “unique status” in the region and the state. Ogilvie also said that of the 19 districts in the Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services region, only two — Maryvale and Sloan — have open extracurricular activities. He said that “10 percent portion” is about the same throughout the state.
“If the clear majority of schools in our state, and our area, do not [allow outside participation] . . . and if doing so opens up a legal can of worms, why would you ever raise this question?” Ogilvie said.
How about because it’s the right thing to do? Perhaps Sloan and Maryvale are the ones who have it right.
The family pays school taxes. that district gets that money. How about letting the kids play a little soccer? And do NOT give me the standard liability claim. Every parent signs a consent form, and it would not take a whole lot to make sure everyone is covered.
Do you think that it is asking too much to have you kid play a little after school sports when you’re already paying for it?
And while I’m at it, Check out this quote from the School Superintendent concerning the school losing the trooper assigned as a result of Spitzer’s budget…
The fact that [Spitzer] would consider crime in the city . . . to be more important than the safety of thousands of students and staff is incomprehensible to me,” Christmann said.
Yeah, it’s pretty rough here on the Island, and that ONE trooper is all that keeps us from complete and utter chaos.
And there’s crime in the cities?
There’s someone with a firm grasp an the world around him..
January 31st, 2008 at 8:18 am
I think that the kid should be able to play as well. One of the things that people seem to think about home schooled kids is that they lack interaction with kids their own age. Sometimes true, and from what I have seen dealing with some home schooled kids in college, most of the time not. I wouldn’t even be against them having to pay a fee, since I guess schools are now charging activities fees, bus fees and who knows what else to make ends meet.
As for the state trooper thing, I wish they had them when I was in school. It’s not that the Island is a hotbed for fights and what not but we did get our fair share of fights and other problems. Maybe not as bad as Buffalo but we do get them. When I was in high school I got stoned. Not high but biblically stoned. The junior lacrosse team threw rocks at me simply because of who I was and the person I was sitting with at the time. Their punishment was to do extra training exercises. If we had had an officer at the school I have no doubt it would have been treated differently. Oh and the coach ordered the team to apologize. The only one that did wasn’t even there that day. Just because the school isn’t rough doesn’t mean that we don’t need them.