The mom and the superintendent

Some of you folks might remember my trials of getting my 15 year old son on a sports team this fall. Here’s the deal. My son has played soccer since was 4 and has swam competitively since he was 9. He was completely homeschooled from kindergarten until 8th grade at which time we decided to take advantage of our school system’s digital academy.

Now, E-schools around here are a few years old. Our school system decided to start one because they were losing students to the other E-alternatives and other charter schools. Sounds like a sound business decision to me. AND their e-school operated at a HUGE profit last year, which they promptly put into the general fund to prop up the other schools… which weren’t doing so well financially.

The question was, if my student is enrolled in a district sanctioned e-school. One that my taxes go to support, one that they benefit from financially because of his enrollment, one that my husband’s business also in the school district supports, why can’t he participate in sports.

Now last summer, Mr. R. the overweight, jovial, but stubborn administrator of the E-school pretty much got into my face about this and told me that unless the kid’s physical body is in the actual school during the week for x amount of hours, he can’t compete. I had checked that out too, and I thought he was wrong, but you can’t argue with an administrator like Mr. R who is obviously use to outshouting any one who disagrees.

So Calvin did NOT compete in soccer this season. The first season in 10 years he has not participated in as a player. He did however work as a ref and has enjoyed opening a new bank account and loading it up with money!. In the meantime, he has been practicing with the swim team twice a day at 6:00 a.m.and 3:00 p.m. and he loves it. The idea of giving that up was just crushing. It would mean that he would go back to practicing with the jr. high kids and that the practices wouldn’t have been as challenging and he would be one of a handful of older kids.

He will have to quit practicing with them on November 1 unless I do something. So I called the Ohio Hih School Athletic Association, and spoke with a commissioner. She told me that in Ohio, they are interpreting the rules to mean that if a school sanctions an E-school, they can treat it like a vocational school, and the child can participate in sports… GREAT!! It’s up to the superintendent.

So I’m done talking to the director of sports, I’m not getting jerked around by school board members who don’t return calls, and I sure as heck am not going to try and reason with Mr. R… I made an appointment with the superintendent himself for tomorrow!! I hope I don’t throw up.

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