Published: October 07, 2008 01:55 am            

STARPOINT: Parents of home-schooled kids favor extracurricular participation

Allowing home-schooled students to participate in intramurals or extracurricular activities would have a positive impact on everyone, some parents said at a Starpoint school board meeting.

The district held a second public hearing Monday to gauge the community’s opinion about allowing home-schooled kids to participate. The first hearing was in September, but due to a number of schedule conflicts, none of the parents attended the meeting. Starpoint has 47 home-schooled students in the district.

The issue was originally raised at an Aug. 4 school board meeting by Superintendent C. Douglas Whelan. Whelan said he was contacted by a parent who asked if the district would consider allowing home-schooled students to participate in extracurricular activities on campus.

The parent, Dean Mellas, had home-schooled all four of his children, and the youngest is about to finish high school. Mellas attended the meeting and said allowing home-schooled kids to participate in intramurals would benefit the community and the school by linking the two together.

“It offers a lot of opportunity for these home-schooled kids to interact with some of the public school kids,” Mellas said. “I think it’ll create a lot more bonds for the entire community and all of the children in the community.”

Resident Don Manta thanked the school board for taking the time to listen to parents of home-schooled kids, who are looking forward to a chance for their kids to participate.

“We are excited that this is an option,” he said. “We have four children, and I think they’d be excited at the possibility.”

Amy Zimmerman has five daughters, two of whom are in high school and competing in sports wherever they can. That can be costly, and participation in intramurals or extracurricular activities would benefit the home-schooled kids because it would give them a place to belong, Zimmerman said.

“Home-schoolers have to pay a lot of money to find sports, activities for our kids,” she said. “We pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for ballet classes or soccer programs or basketball or whatever it might be. And we do pay our tax dollars like everyone else does. It would be a wonderful opportunity for the kids to have a community.”

Jerry Cribbs also called Whelan, and then attended Monday’s meeting. She has three children, one of whom was just put into public school. Cribbs said her two other kids are into sports and as a result, go anywhere they can to play. Allowing home-schooled kids to participate would help their relationships with the public school kids in the community, she said.

“They play with the other (public school) kids all summer long,” she said. “School comes, and they go their way and we can’t. For you to think about it and to let us to be a part of the school family would be like a community family.”

Dan Barrett attended the meeting and said he has coached little league and soccer, as well as even coaching Mellas’ kids. He said that a school and community are connected, and allowing the community to participate is what a school does.

“Somebody from the school administration one day said to me they were tired of the school being ranked by numbers,” Barrett said. “And that you have to realize the school is the community, and the school is a family. Extending it out to the families in the community is just part of being a school.”

Whelan said the board still has to figure out the details of allowing home-schooled kids to participate in intramurals and would continue to discuss the issue.

Contact reporter Joe Olenick at 439-9222, ext. 6241.

        

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