Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Home-Schooled Student May Participate in School Archery Program

Home School Legal Defense Association recently helped a member family whose son had been denied participation in the archery program at a middle school in the Fort Mill School District-York 4. In accordance with state law, the parents of the 7th grader had given the superintendent timely notice of their intent to have their son participate in the archery program, but the individual in charge of the program replied by email that their son was not permitted to do so. The school official gave two reasons for the denial: that the archery program was only open to public school students, and that the National Archery in the Schools Program (NASP), which sanctioned the instruction, prohibited participation by homeschooled students. The school official was wrong on both counts.

In 2012, the South Carolina General Assembly passed the Equal Access to Interscholastic Activities Act, which granted students receiving home instruction the right to participate in extracurricular activities in public schools. Further, the law expressly prohibited a school district from contracting with any private entity that supervises interscholastic activities if the private entity prohibits participation by homeschooled students. After researching the NASP rules, HSLDA determined that, contrary to the assertion of the school official, NASP does not prohibit homeschooled students from participating in its public school archery programs.

HSLDA Senior Counsel Dewitt Black sent a letter to the superintendent on the family's behalf. A week later, the school district notified the parents that their son was allowed to participate.


More at: http://www.hslda.org/