The Eastern Pulaski School Board is discussing whether homeschool students should be allowed to take part in high school sports and other extracurricular activities through the school corporation.
Superintendent Dan Foster says a policy was discussed during last month’s school board meeting, after the issue was raised by some parents. “What we’re trying to do is create our own policy that would dictate for grade levels and everybody would know, all the patrons would know, the principals,” he explains. “And just trying to make a uniform policy because, right now, if you come in nine-through-12 and you want to play a varsity sport, you’re under pretty strict guidelines from the IHSAA, or you are ineligible and then if the coach uses that player, they would forfeit those games.”
While extracurricular activities at the high school level are highly regulated by the state, it’s a different story at the elementary level. Foster says the goal is to add some consistency with the new policy, but he notes there will have to be a few trade-offs. “When you do something like that, somebody’s not going to be happy, but you have to make something that’s better for the whole,” he says. “And then there was one point that the board thought about having different rules for different grade levels. Personally, and a couple of the board members also felt like that would become burdensome.”
The school board is scheduled to consider the policy on second reading Monday. Among other criteria, it requires homeschool students to live within the Eastern Pulaski School District and be enrolled in at least one math or language arts class, in order to take part in extracurricular activities.
Several other policies will also be considered during Monday’s meeting, dealing with criminal background checks, child abuse reporting, the acceptance of transfer students, and student lunch payments. Monday’s school board meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Eastern Pulaski Conference/Meeting Center.
