Schooled at home now to tap campuses

Arkansas public schools must soon open their gyms, stadiums, band rooms and concert halls to thousands of the state’s home-school students.

Act 1469 of 2013 requires traditional public schools to offer home-school students in middle and high school grades the same opportunities to participate in interscholastic activities as the schools provide to traditional-school students - starting with the coming 2013-14 school year. The act further authorizes the districts to require home school students to take a class on campus, one affiliated with the chosen activity if there is such a class; or, if not, an unrelated course.

Interscholastic activities are those in which students from different schools compete, and they include not only athletics - football, basketball, swimming, volleyball, soccer, golf and more - but also band, choir, debate, mock trials and anything else governed by the Arkansas Activities Association.

“We are going to welcome them with open arms,” Jerry Guess, the superintendent of the Pulaski County Special School District, said in announcing the deadline of Monday for any home-school students to notify his district of interest in a sport or other activity.

The law, introduced by Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, has been tagged the “Tim Tebow Law,” a reference to the Heisman Trophy-winning college quarterback who was schooled at home but played sports at Allen D. Nease High School, a public school in Ponte Vedra, Fla. More than half the states now permit home-school students to participate in activities while maintaining their home-school status.

About 16,000 Arkansas students were home schooled in 2011-12, the latest year for which total numbers are available from the Arkansas Department of Education.

The state’s largest concentration of home-school students - 1,182 - live just outside Little Rock and North Little Rock in the Pulaski County Special School District. More than half - 701 - are in grades six through 12, which would make them eligible under the new law to seek to participate in the traditional school activities.

“I hope a lot of students take advantage of this,” said Guess, who oversees a district with six high schools and six middle schools. “We think it is a golden opportunity for home-school students to see what we are doing here. We are pretty proud of our academic courses, and we’re pretty proud of our extracurricular programs, athletic and otherwise. “

Jerry Cox, executive director of the the Family Council, which advocated for the act, agreed that the law creates recruitment opportunities for the school districts and that some of the state’s superintendents “get it.” But the reaction to the law overall has been mixed, Cox said, with some districts putting up resistance.

“Some districts are rolling out the red carpet,” he said, “and others are rolling the carpet up.”

The law is relatively a short one - three pages. It doesn’t include an emergency clause - meaning it doesn’t actually go into effect until later this summer. It also doesn’t require the state Board of Education to develop a uniform set of rules for the districts to use to comply with it.

That’s a problem, Cox said. He would prefer that the state Education Department and the Board of Education develop proposed rules for complying with the law that would be subject to a public hearing, public debate and possible revisions before they are finalized by the board.

“I do have concerns that every district is making its own rules and regs for implementation a law passed by the Legislature that is supposed to bring uniformity to the process,” Cox said. “But what we are getting is this tapestry of rules and regs out there that aren’t going to be uniform across the state, and not every student is going to be treated the same way.”

Provisions of the act limit the home-school student to participating in a sport or activity at the public school that serves the student’s attendance zone.

There are two paths to participation, optional and required. It is optional for a school principal to permit a home-school student to participate in an activity if the student reports to the school within the first 11 days of the semester and advises the principal in writing of thedesire to participate in an activity before the deadline for sign-up or tryout occurs.

The law requires a school principal to permit a home school student to pursue participation in an activity if the student enrolls in a class or classes in the school before the sign-up or tryout and provides the principal with documentation that the student scored at the 30th percentile or better on a nationally recognized test such as the Stanford Achievement Test, 10th edition.

The home-school student is not guaranteed participation in an interscholastic activity but will have an equal opportunity to try out and participate, according to the law.

The home-school student must meet the same criteria for participation that apply to the public-school students. That includes trying out, complying with behavior codes, undergoing drug testing if that is required by a school, submitting permission slips, and paying fees.

The act authorizes a school to require the home school student to take at least one course, or, as it is phrased in the law, “a home- schooled student who participates in an interscholastic activity may be required to be at school not more than one period per school day.”

Another provision says that a student who withdraws from a school to be home-schooled shall not participate in an interscholastic activity in the resident school district for 365 days after the withdrawal.

Home-school parent Sherri Norwood of Siloam Springs is pleased that there is now a state law on the matter.

“It’s not perfect, but we think it is a good step in the right direction,” Norwood said last week. “Our family is still trying to decide whether we are going to jump through the hoops to do it, but I have a couple of kids who would love to swim for the high school.”

Norwood sees provisions in the law that are subject to different interpretations, and that gives her some pause.

“The problem is that the Department of Education hasn’t come up with any rules and regs to clarify what this means,” Norwood said about the terms of the law, “and so the school is left to read it, and I read it differently than school representatives read it.”

While the state board has not developed any rules, the Arkansas Activities Association has added pages to its handbook, describing how home-school students can participate in activities on the basis of Act 1469.

And the Arkansas School Boards Association last week distributed to its client school districts a model school board policy that elaborates on the act and that the districts can consider adopting.

“There will be a fair amount of variance around the state, partially because of the different size of the districts,” said Ron Harder, policy service and advocacy director for the Arkansas School Boards Association.

The Pulaski County Special district’s proposed policy sets the Monday deadline for notifying the superintendent or the district’s equity and pupil services office in writing of a student’s desire to participate in an interscholastic activity and take a course. That office number is 234-2015.

The superintendent will approve or deny the request within 30 days. The district is requiring home-school students to take at least one course on campus.

If just one course is selected by such a student, it would have to be a course related to the student’s selected interscholastic activity, be it band, or choir, or athletics, Guess said. But in cases where the interscholastic activity does not have an affiliated course or where the student chooses to take more than one course, the selection would be from the range of courses the district offers.

The Pulaski County Special district proposal is subject to approval from Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell, who has served as the school board for the district since it was taken over by the state in 2011 because of financial mismanagement and overspending.

The Bentonville School District, home to the state’s second-largest concentration of home-school students, adopted a policy in May regarding home-school participation. It doesn’t contain any application deadlines.

Mary Ley, Bentonville’s executive director of communications, said she knows of home-school students already seeking to join that district’s swimming program. The addition of home-school students to Bentonville classes and activities adds a new wrinkle to the burgeoning enrollment in that system.

“We had a space issues without that, so, yes, it is somewhat complicated,” Ley said about the potential for home-school students to join the class rosters. “We are trying to be very accommodating and do the best we can.”

The Conway School District, home to a sizable population of more than 500 home school students, hasn’t put in place a policy but is following what is “a pretty clear law,” Superintendent Greg Murry said. To date, one home-school student has made inquiries about playing tennis for the high school, Murry said.

Cox, the Family Council director, predicted that home school students who live in rural areas will be more likely to take advantage of the new state law.

Michael Bennett agreed. Bennett and his wife, Renee, are the athletic directors for the Pulaski County Flames, a home-school athletic organization for more than a half-dozen sports.

“I can imagine some might participate in Little Rock,” Michael Bennett said, “but where there is not a large community of home-schoolers - where they can’t field a team - it really makes a lot of sense.”

Bennett would like to see home-school teams be allowed to compete against public-school teams.

“Our goal is to just let our teams play their teams. We have some very good teams. Our senior volleyball team participates nationally and actually won the national home school tournament in Omaha a few years ago, and they were runners-up last year. There’s a high level of talent and competitiveness that most people aren’t aware of.

“I would love for my senior-high basketball team to be able to play some of the Arkansas Activities Association-member schools that we are not allowed to at this point.”

Act 1469 does not include any provision for increasing state aid to the school districts for the home-school students, but other laws dictate that the schools will receive partial funding for home-school students on the basis of the time spent in classes, said Phyllis Stewart, the Education Department’s chief of staff.

Guess said that common sense would dictate that the district would receive some aid to for the home-school students who attend its classes.

“But that’s not an issue with us,” he said. “If we get one-seventh of the per-student allocation, we’re fine with it. If we don’t, we don’t. Whatever the funding formula dictates, we’re satisfied. Mostly what we want to do is offer these kids opportunities, and we hope that they see good things going on and that they will want to go from being a part-time student to a full-time student.”