Should homeschool kids be allowed to play school sports?

If you want to play on a school team, you should have to, ya know, actually attend said school. Otherwise, it's just a club team, for better or for worse. Several places where I have worked had homeschool teams in basketball and baseball, comprised completely of kids who were homeschooled. They usually competed at the lowest enrollment level allowed, usually against religious schools. I have no problem with that.

 

Home schooled students are voluntarily (parents making the decision I will include in voluntarily) giving up certain experiences by not going to public or private school. If you want that regular school experience -- sports, prom, socially awkward courtship rituals -- then attend a regular school.

What I also dislike is when private schools actively recruit home schooled students to fill out the ranks of their sports teams. If your school cannot get enough students to field a team, you shouldn't be allowed to go outside the school to make it work. One school I used to cover got kids who lived in a town more than a hour away from the school to play baseball. They had a school in their town they could have played for, but chose to go to a homeschool instead. And the kicker was they didn't technically play for a homeschool -- it was some program (that I believe only had this family) that was filed as an alternative school that had a multischool agreement with the private school I covered.

 

A couple of years ago, when Virginia was trying and failing again to pass a bill requiring public schools to take on home-schooled kids, one of the poor, home-schooled athletes testifying in favor was a kid so deprived, he already had a scholarship offering from University of Virginia soccer by the time he sat down in the witness stand chair.

Actually, I'm shocked that there aren't club coaches trying to set up home-school networks so they can have teams of superathletes who don't have to worry about a public (or private) school schedule.

But what that UVa soccer kid's testimony, and Missy Franklin giving up $3 million in endorsements to swim for Regis Jesuit in Denver, and the whole movement toward so-called Tebow laws (though he took advantage of one, it wasn't created for him) tells me is that to high-school age kids, there is still something very special about putting on your school colors and playing in front of fellow students.

 

My initial feeling is no... Is it fair to the kids? Probably not, but it's their fault they have asshole parents who insist on homeschooling them.

I think this issue is only going to get bigger and bigger because between bullying and school shootings, parents are finding even more reasons to homeschool kids.

I think of the kids are homeschooled, there are very, very few where it's justified. The rest just fall into the paranoid parents who are afraid to subject their kids to other kids.

 

My argument, that homeschool families don't buy (but clearly I don't care), is that a homeschool situation is a private-school situation -- except you have a private school of one that meets in your kitchen. I have not seen a bill that extends the same courtesy, in the name of I-pay-taxes-too, that would allow someone at, say, a local Lutheran school that doesn't offer football to allow their students to play for the local public school team.

 

I think if it's mutually beneficial for both parties it should be allowed. Just like some schools have co-ops to help field a full team, and at times that occurs between a public and private school.

That said, I think the home school kid's address should dictate in which school they can play sports. If the school doesn't want to allow the home school student to play, they shouldn't be forced to (unless they have a co-op, if that makes sense).

 

Another opportunity for the privatization zealots to undermine and dismantle public education.

In the past, when this was not allowed, if you wanted your kid to play on a public HS team, you had to send them to that public HS.

Now, the link is broken.

 

In North Dakota, you can play for a school you don't go to. Say, if your team doesn't have a football team and you want to play football you can play at the closest school that offers it. Same for swimming and other sports.

 

A similar issue -- and I remember this coming up in Michigan, Starman, back when big bad Engler was pushing the charter schools -- is whether or not kids that attend "charter" schools can play for the local public h.s. team.

Usually charter schools get the state per-pupil money but can't assess property taxes. So they are "public school" students, and their parents are paying property taxes into the local school district.

Therefore (at least in our area) charter school kids allowed to play public h.s. sports provided they pay the required fees and arrange the transportation.

Of course, some charter schools offer sports, too (although usually not as many as the public high school).

 

About half the charter schools in the Detroit area are wannabe basketball factories run out of the trunks of AAU coaches' cars.

Most are abysmally atrocious but a few are powerhouses.

 

You're going to have to explain to me how the act of home schooling puts a financial burden on the public schools. Home schoolers are paying property taxes into the system and taking nothing out. You're right that the school doesn't get its state funding for that student -- but isn't that state funding supposed to help pay for educating that student? The one who isn't there?

Also, that state money doesn't just appear out of thin air. It comes from the taxpayers -- including home school families. I'd say they are without question putting more money into the system than they are taking out.

 

In Texas there are home school teams, but they play in the private school leagues. I'm not sure if they are districted or play independently, or are just automatically placed in the top division. Some of them are pretty competitive.

The opposite issue is that of the charter schools, which the UIL has to accept because these schools accept state funds. Sometimes, someone like Deion Sanders comes along to make a travesty of the system with his Prime Prep. The UIL changed the rule, and now, charters must play at the level of the smallest school in the ISD the charter is located within. That means at least 3A in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.