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Bill would let home-schoolers play sports in public schools
By Desiree Hunter, Associated Press
Published April 12, 2007
MONTGOMERY - Glencoe teen Austin Brown likes to play football
and basketball and also enjoys spending time with his family while he's
home-schooled during the day.
Under current Alabama laws, he can't have both.
The Senate Education Committee heard public comments Wednesday on a bill that
would allow home-schoolers to participate in extracurricular activities like
athletics and band at public schools.
The 13-year-old Austin plays youth league football but will be too old when he
starts eighth grade. He said he's the only one of his friends who won't be
playing ball in public school next year.
"It's pretty rough," Austin, at the hearing with his mom, Gina, said of watching
his friends dart off to practice at Glencoe Middle School. "It just makes you
feel bad that I can't join them and stuff."
Most of the speakers at the hearing opposed the bill, which they said raises too
many unanswered questions, including the calculation of home-schooled students'
grade point averages, recourse for discipline problems and the handling of
insurance costs.
State Superintendent of Education Joe Morton said the current rules of only
allowing full-time public students to participate in extracurricular activities
are "very fair."
"Public school students have a lot of things they have to adhere to like `no
pass, no play.' How do you apply that to a home-schooled child who is educated
by mom or dad or a tutor?" he said in an interview. "That's just the tip of the
iceberg of 9,999 questions that public schools and coaches and assistant coaches
would have. We wouldn't have to have any questions if the student would just
enroll (in public school) full-time."
Gina Brown would let her son transfer to public school if he really wanted to in
order to play sports, but said that's a choice he and other home-schoolers
shouldn't be forced to make.
Most home-school families support the schools in their areas and wouldn't be
shunned by other kids already on the teams because the kids often already know
each other, she said.
"We look at it as a community thing," Brown said. "It's the education
(officials) who are blocking this."
The bill sponsored by state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, was first proposed
last year, but it never left committee.
The bill would be called the "Tim Tebow Act" after the high-profile Florida
quarterback who is expected to start as a sophomore. Tebow was home-schooled in
Florida but was allowed to play football at Nease High School, where he led his
team to the Class 4A state championship in 2005.
John David Bagley, who attended the hearing with his parents, said Alabama
schools could be losing out on the talents of home-schooled students like Tebow
- not just in sports, but in dance and music, too.
"There are 22 states around the country that have been able to make this work.
Why is this such a problem in Alabama?" the 14-year-old asked the committee.
The Cullman teen begins ninth grade in the upcoming school year and said being
able to participate in his favorite team sports - football, baseball and
basketball - would teach him about teamwork and healthy competition.
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